In Dreams
by sockmonkeyhere
Summary: Two years after the destruction of Sunnydale, the Scoobies and the Fang Gang cross paths again. Sequel to Canis Familiar.
1. Chapter 1

**IN DREAMS**

Setting: Post-"Not Fade Away"

Pairing: Spike/Fred; some Angel/Nina; some Oz/OC

Rating: R

Summary: Two years after the destruction of Sunnydale, the Scoobies and the Fang Gang cross paths again. Sequel to _Reentry _and _Canis Familiar._

Disclaimer: _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and _Angel_ canon characters belong to Mutant Enemy.

Author's Note: For readers who aren't familiar with this series of stories, Fred has been resurrected and now shares her body with Illyria. They, along with Gunn, Angel, and Spike, have relocated to a hellmouth near Phoenix, Arizona, where they've been joined by Oz. This series also contains some recurring original characters: Elsie D was introduced in _Canis Familiar, _and Paloma, Kay, Thu Kheim, Dilip Singh, and Michael Wight were introduced in _Reentry._ They're another band of "white hats" similar to the Scoobies and the Fang Gang, because with all the evil in this 'verse it wouldn't make much sense for Buffy's and Angel's groups to be the only two in existence. I've made every effort to beat my original characters very thoroughly with the Mary Sue whuppin' stick before letting them wander out onto the pages.

**Chapter 1**

The countryside of Wales is wild and green and lush, with tree limb canopies that almost hide the sky and enfold its roads like thick woolen blankets. Brambles grow there, and vines and briers and low stone walls. The walls are lichen-covered and ancient - they may no longer serve their original purpose, but they are a part of the landscape, and they are not going anywhere soon.

Three women were perched on one of those walls, sitting on their bottoms with their toes barely brushing the ground, in the privacy of the back garden of an isolated house. It was midday, but the sun was obscured behind clouds and seemed determined to stay there. Sheets of laundry flapped on clothes poles, blocking the view from the road. Save for the breeze and the laundry's wet, thin, popping noises, the garden was still and silent. The women murmured among themselves. Their eyes closed, and their hands moved in tandem, making circular motions in the air. The mirror they'd hung from a tree branch near the wall did not reflect any of this; it was too tarnished and speckled with age.

It showed them other things, though.

The eldest woman's eyes snapped open and she squinted at the glass, surprised and mystified. She snatched up the fax letter from her lap and read its contents again - no, nothing here had indicated that there were...

A gasp drew her attention back. The woman on her right was gaping at the mirror now, too, her mouth actually hanging open in shock.

"Remember all the details you can, Sheila," the elder woman whispered to her. "The council will want to know about this."

* * *

Rupert Giles' ceiling was leaking again.

Twice already the stupid thing had been repaired, and each time the leak had returned in a new place; today's location was directly over his desk. Fortunately he'd been _at_ the desk at the time, and had shoved the battered piece of furniture out of harm's way and left a small plastic rubbish bin in its stead to catch the drips. He hated it here. Gone forever was the beautiful old Victorian structure that had served them so well, with lovely antique bookcases and warm, mahogany wainscoting. New headquarters was a former hospital and its adjacent car park. The building was big enough and the rent affordable, but it had its downside and that included atrocious plumbing. And it was stale, and spartan, and uninviting, and painted a depressing institution green. They'd hoped to find permanent facilities before now, and get a decent grasp on the names and numbers of slayers, and find watchers suitable to oversee them...

_Imagine a world where the slayers outnumber the watchers. _Always before it'd been the other way around; lately Giles had begun to appreciate some of the merits of that older system. There was so much to organize now, and so many more people to plan for. Substitute watchers hurriedly pulled in from all walks of life: sorcerers, scholars, psychologists, martial artists. Financial wizards (literally as well as figuratively), to maintain the funding needed to support the new council. Stipends for the slayers for services rendered - that was one of the first new rules that Giles had insisted on - and housing for those who needed it. Weapons. Archives. Around-the-clock security systems. Giles gazed at the dozens of icons on his laptop screen and felt his eyes begin to fog over.

"Rupert?"

A tap on the door at knob level, and Mr. Yoder from the library department came into the office, a pencil tucked behind his ear and manilla folders wedged tightly under his arm. Like Giles, he was a council "old-timer," although his actual age could have been anywhere from early thirties to middle fifties; it didn't reveal itself in his face, and Giles couldn't recall it either. There was a look about the man of determination and no-nonsense. He crossed the room with a rolling gait, for he was a dwarf. ("No, Pinhead," Faith had sighed at Xander's look of confusion. "A _human_ dwarf. MID-GET.")

Yoder glanced up at the leaky ceiling. "Isn't there a toilet upstairs right over that spot?"

"Yes. There is. Thank you for noticing." Giles slowly and tiredly removed his glasses and began to polish them. Yoder pulled up a chair.

"I've catalogued eight more volumes of the Heemahd _Encyclopaedia of Daemon Biology_. Togashi's widow found them in a safe that survived when the bringers burned down their house." He slid the pile of folders across the desk to Giles. "There's a set written in English, and one in Japanese. The grammar in the English transcription's not as smooth as our original copy was, but it'll do."

Yoder had only been an assistant librarian before the bombing - not much more than a clerk, really - but he was the sole surviving member of the old council's library staff, and the employee most familiar with the remaining bits of research and resource material, and so under the emergency conditions he'd found himself promoted to Interim Head Librarian. Accustomed to the soft, cultured English accent of Yoder's predecessor, Giles found the man's blunt American voice jarring.

"There's also a treatise available on the black market that sounds promising: _The Transmigration of Souls,_ self-published in 1972.I don't think this one's a hack job; the guy sounds like he really knew his stuff. Even if it _is_ all theory." Yoder tapped his pencil on the desk for emphasis, and then muttered under his breath, "...It would have been nice to have some details from the one person we knew who'd experienced it first-hand..."

Giles felt the heat rising to his face, and tried to will himself not to turn red. "Paul, as I've explained to you before, I was more than a little preoccupied with saving the lives of dozens of girls, not to mention preserving the slayer line AND halting an attack from the hellmouth that threatened our entire world. There really wasn't any time left to devote to a partially-insane vampire who by his own admission couldn't always tell fantasy from reality."

"According to the girls there was a lot of free time. Some of them said you even appeared to go out of your way to avoid speaking to him."

_Good lord, the man's like a dog with a bone with this! _"He couldn't be trusted! There was no way of knowing when he was under The First's control, and..." Giles drew a slightly shaky breath. "And he attempted to rape Buffy. The girl is like a daughter to me, and fathers and watchers find it hard to forgive men who hurt their girls."

"He tried that _after_ the re-souling, or before?"

"Before...Not that it matters! You've a wife and children; if a vampire attacked one of them, you'd understand why I see it the way that I do." For an instant, before he beat it back down, a horrific memory skated across the surface of Giles' mind.

_Jenny. Oh, Jenny._

Yoder was unrelenting. "It was still your duty. You threw away the opportunity of a _lifetime_, Man! With Angelus's gypsy clan lost, Spike was the only link we had to a way to maybe ensoul ALL vampires! In all of the council's annals there's never been a record of any vampire even _wanting_ to reclaim their soul, much less _doing_ it! And _how'd_ he do it? And where? Out of all those people in that house, not ONE person asked him?"

"We _do_ have a way..."

"Which apparently only works when the soul is close at hand. The only two times Ms. Rosenberg's done it successfully was with Angelus. Who knows; the clan probably designed that spell specifically for him and no one else." Yoder tossed the pencil across the desk in irritation. "We've never been able to make it work on any other vampire." He leaned forward and fixed the watcher with a glare. "And you ignored my question. NO one asked?"

Giles returned the glare with one of his own. "I. Don't. Know."

It was ridiculous to have even been drawn into this discussion. Yoder had already cornered everyone who'd crossed the threshold of the Summers' home that fateful year and grilled them mercilessly, and gotten nothing for his trouble. No one, so far as Giles knew, had spoken to Spike much at all...except for Buffy.

And whatever Buffy knew, Buffy was keeping to herself.

* * *

"You're sure it's gone now?" An ashen-faced curator halted midway on the top-floor staircase of a corporate art gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, clearly reluctant to go up any further. He drew back another cautious step as Spike and Fred descended.

"Completely," Fred assured him. "Dead and evaporated."

Their night's work had been the trapping and killing of a small but malevolent gremlin who had taken up residence in the gallery's storage rooms and bitten the ankles of anyone who entered - not a dangerous assignment, by any means; simply time-consuming. It had scurried into hiding at the scent of vampire, and the bulk of their time had been spent in creeping around with a flashlight and a broom handle and flushing the wee beastie out. Now it was morning, and the upper halls and paintings and statuary were awash with natural sunlight. Spike took care to give the skylights and windows a wide berth.

"I want to thank you, on behalf of the entire museum board," said the curator. "I'm not ashamed to admit that we were at a complete loss. We never would have believed that such a thing existed! I can't imagine anything more frightening."

"Oh, me either." Spike glanced toward a collage of parakeet photographs with a jaded eye.

"The director should have your payment in the mail by Wednesday at the latest." The curator glanced at his watch. "It'll be time for us to open soon. If you'd like to have a stroll around the floors while you're waiting for your ride, be my guest. We've got some beautiful pieces." He nodded his gratitude again and walked away in the direction of the elevator.

The stillness in this wing of the museum was almost palpable. Not a sound or motion from the outside world penetrated it. High, white walls whose sleek sameness was broken only by the paintings and by a few shallow, recessed niches with narrow windows; smooth white floor underfoot. The sculptures endlessly, silently, patiently waiting.

"Drusilla used to love to prowl around places like this," Spike commented as their footfalls echoed in the empty air. "She could tell you all the barmy things that the artists had ever thought or done. Didn't read it off the little brochures; just knew by looking at the art itself - who'd been obsessed with doin' his sister-in-law, who was addicted to morphine, who'd lopped off an ear. She liked the avant-garde stuff best. Said some of those blokes knew about colors that nobody could see."

Talk of Drusilla rarely made Fred uncomfortable, although she knew that it _ought_ to - Dru was evil, after all, and a murderess, and had been Spike's lover for more than a hundred years. Wesley had shown her a photo of the vampire once. She'd stared out at them from a studio portrait, circa 1880s: slender and pale, with a round, taut face and thin unsmiling lips and bold, exotic, wide-set eyes, her dark hair carefully oiled and pinned and draped over her shoulders in a few long serpentine curls. She was not a classic beauty, but there was something about her that was sensual and attractive. _Come into the picture with me, _she seemed to be saying. Fred could easily imagine her waltzing from canvas to canvas down a museum corridor, twirling around in slow, lazy circles, halting to peer into a painting with fascination and morbid delight and whispering her visions to her William.

Somehow they had drifted into one of the alcoves on the west side of the gallery. Fred leaned back against the wall there and murmured a reply. "Well, there _are_ parts of the light spectrum that are invisible to humans, so she was probably right. Although I'm not sure how the artists knew..."

Her words trailed off as Spike reached out and quietly unfastened the top button of her blouse. The loosely-knit material sagged under its own weight and began to slide off of one shoulder. Fred blushed and tried to finish her thought. "Maybe some of _them_ were psychic, too..."

He undid the second button, and both sleeves fell to her elbows and exposed one of her breasts. She gave a little yelp of alarm and folded her arms under her bust to try to pull the blouse back up, but his hand stopped her.

"No." His voice was low and deep, and so firm that Fred obeyed against her better judgement and held her arms still. His grip on her wrist was not tight enough to hurt her, but it was as rigid as iron; she couldn't have covered herself if she'd tried.

He spoke again. "I want to look at you like this." His eyes, blue and sharp as Arctic water, began with her face and trailed slowly down to fix on the bare little breast. Then he lowered his head to it, and she felt warm kisses there.

Light glinted and played on the thin gold chain around his neck; she watched the light dance as her breath grew shallow. When she finally found her voice, it was no more than a whisper.

"...We can't. Anyone walking in here will see us." She felt a sudden strong suck on her nipple. "_Spike_..."

"It's Sunday morning. Everyone's in church." His words came out muffled against her skin. He placed one final kiss on the soft, plump crevice in front of her armpit, and raised his head once more. The hand that held hers pinioned drew it down to the hem of her skirt, wrapped her fingers around the fabric, and pressed her hand back upward.

Slowly, obediently, with her left arm still trying to support her wayward blouse, she lifted the front of the skirt to just below her waist. She sensed Spike's entire body stiffen, and it was several moments before he spoke.

"I want a painting of you posing like this; looking like this. Sweet. And lovely. And disheveled. And willing. And helpless. And waiting for me."

Hypnotic words. Each one like a single drop of liquid, falling in slow motion with a soft _plunk._

_We can't...we can't... _

She made an almost clumsy effort to move her legs apart. Spike knelt before her and thumbed aside her panties.

And then she no longer cared whether anyone discovered them.

Dust motes swam in the shafts of sunlight in the vast hallway; Fred watched them in an almost dream-like state while the pleasure pooled and pooled. It was so still here; so silent. She turned her face to the window beside her - blessedly shaded from the eastern sun - and gazed at the traffic and people moving about in the street below. _If they look up, they'll see us. They'll see me half-naked. See him- OH! - put his finger inside me. Does anyone ever look up into windows? _The people in the pictures on the walls seemed to be watching, too; oil eyes, acrylic eyes, portly men in crayon business suits and Impressionist ladies in watercolor dresses. Watching her and her demon lover.

_I wonder what they're thinking._

She came with a little cry, Spike's hands on the back of her thighs holding her in place. When she went so limp that she almost fell, he stood up and supported her around the waist with one arm while he unzipped his jeans. He continued to hold her that way as he coupled with her. When he finally spent himself with a hoarse groan, they sagged against the wall and clung to each other.

The entire room seemed bathed in a warm lethargy, squares of sunlight moving silently, imperceptibly across the floor. Under her cheek Fred felt the damp fabric of the vampire's shirt, and his collar bones and shoulder and hardened muscle. She flexed her fingers through his hair and gazed back at the picture people.

Spike recovered first, a bit bleary-eyed but as pleased and sated as a big, lazy cat. "Oh, god, Love, that was...that was delicious." He straightened up, and smiled as he began to adjust their clothing. Then a cloud passed over his face. "I'm sorry, Pet. I got carried away. Didn't mean to strip you naked in public and embarrass you."

He looked so worried now, almost...frightened? He did this sometimes - became convinced that he'd somehow offended her - and she didn't know where it came from. She _did_ know that she wanted him to be happy again.

"You didn't. Well, there was stripping, but you didn't embarrass me." Her mouth broke into a shy little smile of her own; an I-want-to-share-a-secret-with-you smile. "I liked it."

His face relaxed somewhat. "Honestly?"

"Yes! Spike, I'm not a schoolmarm. I like doing naughty things with you."

Now he seemed content again. "Even if it runs up the clothing repair bill? 'Cause I think I may have stretched the hell out of your poor knickers."

She reassured him with a kiss full on his lips and a little whisper. "I loved that best of all."

* * *

The grounds of the Council's new home were not much of an improvement over its interior. No plant life of any sort, unless one counted the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement; nothing but concrete and glass and chain-link fencing. A thirty-five-year-old blight of a building in the industrial north of England, a lifetime away from the C of W's glory days, and now Giles stood in its shadow and watched as Willow Rosenberg emerged from a taxicab and hurried across the car park to him. He opened his mouth to greet her-

"Oh, good. Here you are; all handy and conference periody and coffee breaky, and you're gonna need to cancel...Hi, guys..." Willow paused for breath and forced a calm smile as a cluster of girls walked past them. When they were beyond earshot she dropped the smile just as quickly and gripped Giles's sleeve. "...whatever you've got on your schedule, 'cause this is huge."

"Sit down." Giles nodded toward a narrow ledge running knee-height around the sides of the building. They took seats on it far away from the traffic of the front doors, and Willow dropped a tote bag full of papers at her feet and began to babble again. Her face bore a mixed expression of shock and fear.

"The Wiccan watchers in Wales - wow, try saying that three times fast - who were running a locator spell to find unregistered slayers? Well, this morning they did a scan of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, and when they checked the slayer in Arizona - the Cambodian-American one whose dad won't let her train under the council - they detected not just her, but what looks like a small hellmouth-"

"Oh, dear-"

"And some kind of creature who's giving off vibes that feel a lot like Glory's-"

"Oh, my god-"

"...And two souled vampires."

Giles stared at Willow, dumbfounded.

"_Angel_ and _Spike?_"

The young witch nodded slowly. "Kinda looks that way. I'm not completely sure, 'cause there was a lot of mystical static when I tried to take a peek myself, but we're all pretty positive that the vampires are both he-males."

Giles shook his head in amazement. "Incredible...absolutely unimaginable. Angel's office complex was _destroyed_. There's been no sign of him anywhere, nor of Wesley." He fell silent for a moment and then pondered aloud, "I wonder if the Wolfram & Hart organization is behind the mystical interference...if the vendetta they claimed against Angel was merely a ruse, and he's still one of them. If they've somehow released one of Glorificus's cohorts..."

"What about Spike? How could he have survived the cave-in? I mean, yeah, vampire, but the turok vamps were all flash-fried, so wouldn't Spike have been, too?"

"One would think so, but then the dead have been raised before."

Willow blanched and briefly looked away. Then she turned back to Giles again.

"One of us is gonna have to tell Buffy."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The Summers' latest apartment was the ritziest that Willow had seen yet. According to Dawnie it had taken weeks of wheedling and coaxing by Buffy's wealthy beau (Willow tried hard to refrain from thinking _sugar daddy_), but her sister had finally agreed to let him "take care of his cherished ladies," and now home was a gorgeously-appointed penthouse in one of the upper-upper-upper-class sections of Rome.

"Buffy? ...Did you hear what I said?"

Buffy's face could have passed for one of the marble busts decorating her foyer. It was blank and still and completely unreadable. Every hair on her head lay neatly in place, every fingernail was professionally shaped and lacquered, her cosmetics and clothing were impeccable...and she sat rigid in her large expensive designer chair, staring at Willow.

"Buffy?"

"I heard." There was something so hard about her, and oh, my god, she was so thin. She'd greeted Willow in the airport with a brilliant flash of teeth and some silly quips, and had practically danced her friend through the city, but the smiles were..._brittle,_ somehow, and her joy had seemed almost manic. In the taxi the young witch had tried to read Buffy's aura and found it to be a garbled mess. The sensation had almost made Willow cry.

It hadn't always been this way - there'd been a time when their lives and auras had been much simpler, vampire slaying not withstanding, and the happiness had been relaxed and honest, and they'd all been close. Then the bad years came.

They'd drifted away from one another, she and Buffy and Xander and Giles, and it had begun with Buffy's death and resurrection and gotten worse and worse without any of them even being aware of it. Beloved Tara had become Willow's entire universe, Tara and magic, and when Tara was taken away, Kennedy had marched in and...well, set up shop. And for a while that had been nice, if a little overwhelming. Kennedy had praised Willow's power and reveled in her own, and given constant advice in the two-woman kingdom she constructed for them. But as the months passed, her bragging and arrogance and aggressiveness began to grate on Willow's nerves, until finally all the flattery that Kennedy had to offer couldn't keep Willow from feeling like a trophy wife.

There'd been a loud, ugly breakup, for Kennedy was not a gracious loser. And when the dust had cleared and Willow was alone again, she'd looked up and discovered that continents now separated the Scooby Gang.

_Guys? _

_GUYS? _

_...Where'd everybody go?_

"You'll have to fly out there and see what's going on. You and Giles." Buffy was suddenly on her feet and moving around the room. "Take as many slayers as you need. And that warlock, what's-his-name...Damien Stephan, Darrin Stephens, whatever. Take him, too." Her agitation was growing by the minute, her eyes darting to everything but Willow, and she'd crossed her arms across her chest so tightly that Willow wondered how she could breathe.

"Buffy, you're not coming with us?" _What's WRONG with her?_

"I have to stay here. To protect Dawn." The words were clipped and toneless.

"But we don't know for sure if it's a Glory-thingy. Glory got smooshed, remember? It just _felt_ sort of Gloryish, that's all. It could be anything, like - like some teen demon boy giving off a big blast of hormones. Which would make for a pretty gross visit, now that I think about it." Willow shook herself out of the visual that had crept into her head. "You could leave Dawn with the Watchers' Council; there's a pazillion slayers and witches to guard her there."

"No, I can't. I can't go. I have to stay."

"Not even to see if Angel's still alive?" Willow asked in amazement. "Or maybe what I saw was Spike, but either way..."

Buffy wheeled to face her, and Willow was almost frightened by the wildness in her friend's eyes. She looked like a trapped animal.

Then, just when the slayer's hysteria seemed to be reaching critical mass, the cold stone mask slammed down again with an almost audible _thud. _

"Dawn'll be home soon. I need to order dinner." Without another word, she walked over to a large expensive designer desk, picked up a phone, and dialed a number, unaware of the trickle of blood running down her arm where her fingernails had pierced into her own elbow.

* * *

Fred cooked dinner herself, in their brand-new house that they'd lived in always - a house that looked remarkably identical to the house of her fourth-grade friend Jo Ellen Myers, but Fred found nothing remarkable about that. The view from the kitchen doorway showed her their living room with its few pieces of worn furniture and polished pine floors. Spike was on the sofa. He got up and strolled across the room to the fireplace, and said something to her about...something; she couldn't make out what. Then he turned and accidentally bumped his chest hard against the sharp-pointed corner of the oak mantel board. In an instant he dissolved into dust.

Shock clamped around Fred like an icy vise.

_Spike's GONE. He was here and alive a second ago, and now - now a second later there's nothing left of him. _

_We were just about to have supper. _

_He's DEAD._

She stared at the circle of dust in stunned disbelief. Then a sadness so lonely and painful and all-encompassing that it felt like suffocation took hold of her, and she began to cry.

...She was still crying - into her pillow - when she woke from the nightmare and opened her eyes. In the dim pre-morning light she saw the motel room around her, the room that they _actually_ lived in, and she turned over with a terrified dread that she'd find the other half of the bed empty.

He was there, though, safe and whole, and sound asleep. Fred burrowed up against him with a little sob and shook him awake.

"Whuh - huh - Fred, what're you doin'?"

"I had a bad dream," she whispered.

Spike rolled onto his side and wrapped his arms around her; draped a leg over hers; crooned into her hair. "Everything's all right now. Don't be afraid. Dream's all gone." Her ear and cheek pressed tight against his chest and she felt the words rumble there. "What was this one about? Pylea?"

Her voice came out in a watery sniffle. "Uh-uh. ...I dreamed you'd died."

"Bloody hell," he murmured. He ducked his head down to hers and began wiping and kissing the tears from her face. "Don't cry, Lamb. 'M not dead - well, yeah, I _am_ dead, but I'm still okay."

"Don't SAY that!" she wailed. The intensity - the _panic_ in her voice - startled him. "You're _NOT DEAD_; your body just changed an' it works a little differently than it did before. Don't EVER call yourself dead!"

It upset her that much to think of losing him? He hated to see her grief, but at the same time it filled him with joy. There was someone in the world who would miss him.

"All right, I won't, promise, not even a joke." He groped around under his pillow and pulled out a remote control. "Want the telly on for a night-light? _Reno 911_ is still in the DVD player."

"Okay," she agreed. She was calmer now and her breathing had steadied somewhat. She took the remote and held it with both hands to aim it at the TV set. When the program started, she turned the sound down low and curled up with a shaky sigh.

Spike pulled the covers up over them both. "Go back to sleep. Sweet dreams this time."

* * *

Giles and Willow arrived at London's Heathrow Airport bright and early of a spring morning, and checked their baggage through without delay. The troll hammer would not travel in this method; it had survived the bombing of the original council building by virtue of its sheer density, and that same weight and density made taking it via airline too cost-prohibitive. They'd arranged to have it teleported to Arizona instead.

At the ticket counter, Giles heard a familiar voice at his elbow, and looked down to see Paul Yoder confirming a boarding pass.

"Surprise," Yoder greeted. "Yep, I've been assigned to this case, too." He paid no attention to Giles' startled expression, but when the agent handed him a ticket envelope he pointed it at the watcher and bobbed it in cadence as he spoke. "If that vampire's still around, I'm gonna make _damn sure_ he gets interviewed." Then he tucked the envelope into the inner pocket of his jacket, grasped the handle of a carry-on flight bag beside him, and pulled it on its tiny wheels to one of the rows of chairs inside the gate. Giles closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, feeling the onset of a headache.

"Room for one more, Honey." Another well-known voice, this one female and joking-eerie, piped up behind him.

_Buffy._

Giles' face registered a mixture of alarm and relief. The last place he wanted this girl to be was anywhere near Spike or Angel, but if it came down to battling another hell god, she was the slayer in which he placed his faith.

She gave him a wan smile. "Sorry. Little _Twilight Zone_ stewardess humor." She shifted her tote bag higher up on her shoulder.

"You've decided to come with us after all, then?"

"Looks like. Where's Will?" The shifting settled into her feet: nervous, restless.

"Oh - oh...she went to get something to drink. She'll be back soon."

Buffy nodded. "That's good." She bit her bottom lip and twisted the tote's strap back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Xander Harris was waiting for them in the Phoenix International Airport at one of the car rental booths...waiting and pacing and standing up and sitting down and fiddling with random objects to the point that a security guard had begun to look at him oddly. He rushed over to Giles' group at almost a gallop.

"You're here. Thank God. I was starting to panic...more." He slapped a set of keys into Giles' open hand. "Our van's gassed up and ready to roll. Although I still say the council should've sprung for an armored car. Or an all-terrain tank. Or a battlestar." He turned to Yoder. "Here's the keys to your Dodge Neon."

Giles straightened his spectacles and looked grim. "Hopefully the situation won't be as dire as we fear. We'll just have to use extreme caution in our approach. We've decided to try the Kheim residence first, to ascertain whether the slayer there has any information that could be helpful - or if she needs help from us. To tell the truth, we have no idea what we'll be facing. It could be nothing."

"Or could be lots." Willow clutched her flight bag to her chest and felt the lumpy spell-casting paraphernalia inside it for reassurance. Some of her strongest equipment was in that bag - it and Buffy's suitcases full of weapons had passed through the airline's X-rays and inspections undetected with the aid of a little glamour-conjuring.

Late afternoon sun shone yellow and warm and cast westerly shadows across the rental company's parking lot. The little group loaded their luggage into the two vehicles, climbed inside, and drove through the maze of airport roads and out onto the highways, heading north. Xander glanced back at the small car keeping pace behind them.

"What's with Uber-Library Guy? How come he wanted his own wheels?"

"To make it easier for us all to spread out. He's determined to conduct his own research on...whatever we find." In Buffy's presence, Giles found mention of Spike or Angel extremely uncomfortable.

"Oh." Xander fell into a momentary awkward silence. "Well, that driver's seat booster chair thing he brought is pretty cool. If I'd had one of those when I was ten, I'd probably have swiped my mom's car every night." He cast a troubled look at Buffy, who seemed to be lost in thought in her own private world. Earlier, Willow had covertly informed him that she'd been this way through the entire flight. He was certain that that moodiness wasn't just due to concern for Dawn's safety, and an ugly surge of _(jealousy It's NOT jealousy, I just don't think she should keep hooking up with guys like that. With __**things**__ like that)_ welled up inside him. After all these years, she'd still never looked at _him_ that way.

On a whim, Xander popped his prosthetic eyeball out of its socket and held it out toward the girls, screeching in a raspy voice, "No Gelfling here! What do Skeksis want with Aughra?"

Willow smiled at him patiently. "How many of those have you lost?"

"Only two. They keep falling off my nightstand and rolling under the bed."

Buffy gave no response. Xander put the artificial eye back in place, thought it over for a moment, then reached out and patted her gently on the shoulder. "It's good to see you guys again," he said quietly.

She raised her head at last, and patted his hand in return. "It's good to see you, too."

There seemed to be little else to feel good about.

* * *

Some stretch of miles beyond the outskirts of Phoenix, the small town of Ashcraft announced itself with a billboard crudely spray-painted so that the letters now spelled "Asscrack," complete with a large pair of men's underpants nailed to the bottom edge of the sign. The underpants billowed out like a windsock as their cars sped past.

The town itself looked peaceful and bucolic: mostly older buildings and asphalt streets, a downtown square, a hardware store, a soda shop, some gas stations and churches and a public school. Street lamps were beginning to come on, but the townspeople continued to move unhurriedly about. One fellow on a riding lawnmover gave a wave to the Scoobies as their van drove by. "That can't be a good sign," Xander muttered. "He's probably got bodies buried under that lawn."

"Shhhhhhh." Willow in the front passenger seat held a smooth stone in her hands and watched the surface change colors. She was operating a supernatural radar, scanning the vicinity for signs of Glory or her minions.

Giles steered slowly while consulting a hand-drawn map. "Kheim, Kheim..." he murmured to himself. "Two more blocks and then right..."

"STOP."

Willow slapped her palm against the window. Startled, Giles dropped his map and hit the brakes, and there was a squeal of tires behind them as Yoder's Dodge narrowly escaped smacking into the van's rear end.

"That house," Willow whispered. "She's there."

They were on a residential street. Directly to their left was an old brick two-story house, large and square with a broad front porch. Hedges grew 'round the base, thick and concealing. Three dark cars hunkered in its driveway and garage. Lights were on in some of its windows; they glowed in the night like malformed cats' eyes. The house seemed to regard the Scoobies with an almost sinister complacency.

Suddenly Giles' door flew open.

"What the hell are you doing?" An irate Mr. Yoder scowled up at them.

Giles had to grip the steering wheel and take several breaths to stop his nervous trembling. It angered him that he felt like a fool. "Willow's sensing an entity in that house...possibly malevolent."

"Oh. Well, if we're going to sit and stare at it all evening, we need to stop parking in the middle of the street and pull over to the curb." Yoder slammed Giles' door shut again and stomped back to his car.

Giles swore softly and eased the van onto the road's shoulder. He killed the engine, then looked back at the house once more. "Willow, is anyone else inside?"

"I don't know. I'll see if I can astral-project...Buffy, could you hand me that red overnight- Buffy?"

The slayer had moved unnoticed to the back of the van, and pulled one of the weapon cases out. Xander reached overhead and switched on the dome light, and a granite-faced Buffy was revealed, looking past them all as though they were not there. They caught a glimpse of silver blade as she threw open the van's rear door, and then she was out the back and sprinting across the street and ignoring their cries of warning.

She ran on wings of fury. All the fear and dread and rage and suppressed emotion of the last two weeks were concentrated in that charge. She pounded across the yard and up the steps. The sealed, solid front door of the house seemed almost to mock her, to defy her. All rational thought left her head. She cocked her right leg up and slammed her heel into the wood just above the knob and keyhole. The door crashed inward and she stepped through, her mighty scythe held high and flashing. And she saw...

A small Asian girl sitting crosslegged on a coffee table, eating ice cream out of a bucket.

A heavy-set young black woman and a bald young black man playing Parcheesi.

A young Hispanic woman and a skinny, slightly older white man playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.

The backs of the heads of three men - brunet, auburn, and dishwater blond - seated on a couch and easy chair, watching TV.

The people in the room froze in place, staring at her. The little Asian girl's cheeks bulged with ice cream as she stared, and a large glop of it slid off her spoon and plopped back into the gallon bucket. Marbles rolled across the surface of the Hungry Hippos game. The skinny older man glanced down at them and quickly activated his hippo to catch the last one.

Giles, Willow, and Xander were crowding into the doorway behind Buffy now, but she was barely aware of them. The three men watching TV had all turned toward her and were staring at her as well, and as she gaped back at them, recognizing all three, the brunet one spoke.

"Buffy."

"Angel."

"Angel!"

"Willow."

"Oz?"

"OZ?"

"Xander."

"Giles?"

"Spike?"

"Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?"

"Shut up." Paloma reached over and smacked Thu in the head.

Willow and Xander stumbled forward and gawked at Oz as incredulous smiles spread across their faces, and they fell upon him, babbling incoherently. Giles scanned the room, completely perplexed. Finally he focused on the two vampires.

"It's true, then. You've survived."

"Rupert." Angel acknowledged him with only the one word, spoken civilly but clearly with no affection.

Spike said nothing at all.

* * *

He'd imagined this moment a thousand times since his resurrection, and later, after the escape from Los Angeles. Meeting Buffy again. Reuniting with her. Convincing her that perhaps he was finally worthy of her, that now there was time to truly heal their wounds and begin anew. He'd pictured her face gazing at his with wonder - sometimes, he'd dared to dream, with love.

Now that the moment was come at last, though, what he saw was neither love nor wonder. He saw instead the same old evasiveness; the look-anywhere-but-there expression that said she still wanted to give nothing. The same face that he'd seen on the morning that he had bared his heart to her a final time, and she had held it for a moment and then changed her mind and dropped it on the ground. The same face that had accompanied the hateful words, "Does it have to mean something?"

He had his answer, then. Nothing would have been different. Didn't matter now, anyway...

But it still hurt.

He got to his feet and nodded politely to Buffy and Giles as they stood rooted in the doorway. "Slayer. Watcher." He passed by them without another word and went out to stand at the edge of the yard.

* * *

_He walked away from me._ She hadn't expected this reaction at all. Some snark, yes; possibly a yearning look or a stroke of his fingers on her cheek. _How can...how can he walk AWAY from me?_ Still clutching her scythe, she rushed out into the yard after him.

She found him leaning against the brick-covered mailbox, hands in his pants pockets, looking out across the neighbor's lawn.

"Why didn't you tell me you were alive?" she cried. "All this time - all this time I thought you were _dead_."

''Bit of a relief, I expect, wasn't it?" His voice hung quietly in the darkness. "Havin' me and my troublesome soul out of your hair. No more feeling obligated to look after me; no more reminder of the time you fucked an evil dead thing."

"I never said..." She realized that she had no idea how to answer that. "That's not fair."

"Why? Because it makes you uncomfortable?"

Buffy slammed the end of her scythe handle against the ground in frustration. "Why do you always DO this? I'm just trying to have a normal life, and you've dropped in out of nowhere in the middle of it! Have you been with Angel all this time, working for that disgusting company? My god, Spike, you belonged with the Council of Watchers, not the law offices of Holocausts R Us! I need a strong right hand, and someone to watch my back - in a fight, I mean; not - not the other way- What gave you the right to decide not to call me? What makes you think that you know what I want?"

"I know that we've been in each other's presence less than five minutes, and already you're talking in circles." He turned slowly and pinned her with a steady, solemn gaze. "You waited until I was dying before telling me that you loved me. When you were sure that sayin' it was safe, because you knew you wouldn't have to commit yourself to it. But there's been a royal cock-up, and I'm not dead after all. So what do you say now?" Buffy's eyes widened; she clamped her lips together, thin and tight, and gripped her scythe handle so hard that her knuckles turned pale. Spike leaned forward and continued to press her. "Can you say it now? 'I love you, Spike'? 'I want to share my life with you and forsake all other men'?"

She took a step backward, and her voice shook. "Stop it."

"That's what I thought." With a resignation born of long and bitter practice, he turned away from her again. "It's a moot point now, anyhow. You've made yourself a new life. And so have I."

Headlights cut through the yard as another automobile pulled into the house's driveway. To Buffy's surprise, Spike suddenly stepped around her and made a beeline for the car. She scurried after him, then stopped midway across as a slender, dark-haired young woman got out.

The woman smiled up at Spike. Spike smiled back, very tenderly. The woman wrapped her arms around his neck and he gave her a hug that lifted her feet a little off the ground. She bent her face down to his and gave him a long, slow, lazy kiss that seemed to go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever...

"I assume the coast is clear," said Mr. Yoder dryly. He'd come up unnoticed beside Buffy and observed the romantic tableau. Without waiting for a reply, he moved on past her and entered the house.

It was just as well that he didn't wait, for Buffy wasn't hearing anything. All sound had been blocked out by the blood roaring in her ears.

The kiss went on and on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Giles had watched Buffy's abrupt departure from the room with dismay, and from the corner of his eye he'd seen Angel actually lurch forward as if to stop her. Their mutual objection to a Buffy/Spike tete-a-tete was probably the only thing that he and Angel would be in agreement on, he thought.

"Giles, look! It's an Oz! It's OUR Oz!" Xander cheered, slapping the young werewolf happily on the back. Willow clung to Oz's arm, beaming from ear to ear.

"It's Oz, it's Oz, it's Oz," she chanted giddily. "Hi, Charles!" She caught Giles' withering look and stopped hopping. "Right. Serious now."

"Who the hell _are_ you people?" Gunn yelled. He took a closer look at the two strangers swarming Osbourne, and a light clicked on in his head. "The witch chick! Willow, right? Angel, what's goin' on?"

"No idea." Angel glared at Giles. The watcher cleared his throat and raised his voice.

"We're here on behalf of the Council of Watchers. We want to check on the welfare of an unregistered slayer, Khiem Thu-"

"Thu Kheim," the tiny Asian girl corrected, and then clamped her hand over her mouth and looked aghast.

Giles turned his gaze on her. "You're Miss Khiem, I presume?" Thu peered over her fingers at Michael and Paloma with a desperate "What should I say?" expression in her eyes.

Michael stood up and said mildly, "I think you'd better leave her alone. That was a brand-new door, by the way."

Giles gave the man a once-over: thin; fair of skin and hair; probably a few years younger than himself, with a round, bland face that bore the scars of a protracted adolescent battle with acne. A harmless human, or another Ben?

He decided not to divulge their knowledge of the mysterious entity's presence yet, and spoke instead to Willow's former beau. "Oz, you're doing well these days?"

"Can't complain."

The boy was still the epitome of understatement.

Mr. Yoder appeared in the shattered doorway. "Is one of you Spike or Angel?" he demanded. "Because I've got a hell of a lot of questions."

Gunn stared at the strange little man and shook his head in helpless wonder. "Yeah, well, take a damn number."

"Spike's outside with Buffy," Willow answered. She bit her lip, suddenly concerned, and added, "I think I'd better go check on her." She squeezed Oz's hand in both of hers. "Be right back."

As she hurried out the door, Oz commented to Xander, "So you're not just here to enjoy the hellmouth?"

"Oh, yeah, that too," Xander sighed. "Wouldn't miss it. I just can't imagine why a hellmouth would want to open under Hooterville."

Kay narrowed her eyes at Xander from across her ample bosom. "Excuse me?"

"Sorry. My bad. Poor choice of an obscure pop cultural reference." Xander smiled at her sheepishly, then whispered to Oz, "I should be afraid of her, shouldn't I?"

* * *

Willow spotted her friend standing still and silent in the middle of the front yard. She came up beside her and touched her arm with a tentative hand. "Buffy?" she said gently. "Where'd Spike go?" She followed Buffy's gaze to the driveway, and her eyes widened considerably.

* * *

Fred straightened up in Spike's embrace, intending to pull her hair back out of the way before leaning in for another smooch, when she caught sight of the two girls watching them. She gave a squeak of embarrassment and a little laugh. "Oops. I didn't know we had company." Spike loosened his hold, and she thought she saw a peculiar look on his face as she took a step toward the visitors.

"Hi..._Willow?_ Oh my gosh, WILLOW!" Fred threw her arms out and wrapped the witch in an enormous hug. "What're you doin' here? It's so good to see you again! Why didn't you tell us you were coming?" She released her and stepped back, waiting for Willow to introduce the blonde girl beside her.

Willow took a deep breath. "It's just some Council business," she said, trying to feign calm. "Fred, I don't guess you've ever met Buffy, have you? This is Buffy...Buffy, this is Fred. Fred helped me re-soul Angel a couple of years ago, remember? ...Oh, 'course you don't remember; you weren't there, duh - but you know I did, and she did; help me, I mean. 'Cause I told you about it." She trailed off, and then added idiotically, "Fred, this is Spike." She gave Spike a weak smile. "Hey. Long time no see."

Fred was pretty, Buffy noted with the tiny portion of her brain that wasn't screaming and throwing itself against the walls. Not beauty pageant pretty, but fairy-tale pretty: big brown eyes, long brown hair, pert turned-up nose...what was the word? "Waif-ish"? She'd been wearing a very pleasant smile, too, until she'd heard the name "Buffy," and suddenly that smile had wavered and she'd looked as if Willow had punched her in the stomach.

All the light seemed to go out of Fred's eyes. She stole a glance at Spike, but he looked as unhappy as she. It was only by the bloodline of generations of gracious southern ladies that she was able to muster herself to say, "Y'all want to come in and sit down?"

"Sure; that'd be nice." Willow nodded at both Fred and Buffy sympathetically, and put her arm around Buffy. "C'mon, let's all go inside, where it's indoors." Spike slipped his own arm around Fred's waist and pulled her close, as much to comfort himself as to comfort her.

Buffy allowed herself to be steered toward the big square house. At the foot of the porch steps she turned back and looked at Fred. "Hi," she said mechanically.

* * *

They returned to the living room to find Giles and Angel still glowering at each other. Vague introductions were being made by everyone else, with little hope of anyone remembering afterward who was who. Willow found a seat on a sofa and pulled the shell-shocked Buffy down beside her. At the sight of Fred, Angel snapped, "Here's someone I'd REALLY like you to meet, Giles. This is the woman whose life you refused to save."

"Whatever are you talking about?" Giles couldn't remember ever having seen the girl whom Spike was escorting. She appeared to be somewhat upset. She gave Giles a long, odd look and then shook her head at the taller vampire.

"Angel, maybe this isn't the right time to bring it up. It's really not important anymore."

"Oh, I think it's _very_ important, Fred. I think Willow ought to hear it, too." Angel turned to Willow, and his voice dripped contempt. "Just before we left L.A., Fred was infected with an entity. It took over her body, and over a period of days it melted all her internal organs, while she lay in a hospital bed in agony. Nothing we could do would stop it. I tried to call you for help, but Rupert here wouldn't let me talk to you. He said that you were visiting another astral plane, and didn't want to be disturbed. And that Fred's suffering was _our_ problem."

"_What_?" Willow's jaw dropped.

"Oh, it gets even more interesting. She _died._ That thing hollowed Fred out and threw her soul into a hell dimension and marched around for months in her stolen body, and would have happily annihilated every living thing on the planet."

Giles cut him off. "I had no way of knowing if you were telling the truth. You and your colleagues _chose_ to join forces with an organization known for its support of evil. You knew you were playing with fire. You've no one but yourselves to blame." He spoke with conviction, but he found it difficult to meet Fred or Willow eye to eye.

One look at Fred's pale face confirmed Angel's story for Willow. She stared at Giles in horror.

"Willow-"

"Fred was my FRIEND! She helped me get Angel back, and she gave us the history book, and...and she WASN'T EVIL!" Her astonishment mounted with each word. "Giles, how _dare_ you not tell me?"

Xander interrupted the argument with a raised hand. "Question. Where's the happy planet-annihilating entity _now_?"

"Her name's Illyria," Spike spoke up from the seat he'd taken near the fireplace hearth. "Most of her powers are gone now, an' Wight figured out a way to bring Fred back to us. 'Lyri sort of comes and goes these days."

Xander and the other newcomers were obviously baffled by that explanation. Gunn clarified it. "Illyria's an Old One." He averted his eyes from Winifred as Giles had done. "An ancient race of big-ass rulers. God-kings, warriors. Solid demon. They look kinda like Rodan from the Godzilla movies."

"Glorificus?" Yoder asked suddenly. Buffy, Giles, Xander, and Willow simultaneously gasped.

"Hell, no, not Glory," Spike snorted. "Illyria's a whole 'nother ball of wax. Although I wouldn't have wanted to be between the two of them in a boxing ring when 'Lyri was in her prime." He paused and lit a cigarette. "You just missed Big Blue, as a matter of fact. She was here yesterday. She 'n Fred have worked out a little time-share system."

Xander dropped his head into his hands. "I don't know whether to feel relieved or stupid." He held out his palm in a halting gesture at Spike. "Don't answer that."

"The mysterious entity," Giles sighed. "I suppose we should be thankful."

"She must have left a residual bit of her essence behind," Willow reasoned. "Strong enough for my tracer stone to pick up." Then a new thought occurred to her. "Where's Cordelia?" she asked. "And Wesley and that nice green guy. And..." She knit her brow, thinking for a fleet second that there'd been someone else, too. "Are they still in L.A.?"

For a long moment, no one said anything. Finally Angel replied in a bleak and pain-tightened voice, "We don't know where Lorne is. Wes and Cordy are dead."

The Scoobies were stunned into silence. Tears welled up in Fred's eyes; she wiped them with her sleeve and leaned her head tiredly on Spike's shoulder.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"How?" Willow whispered.

"We lost Wes takin' down the Black Thorn. Demon coma got Queen C. The Powers pulled her out of it long enough so she could tell us goodbye." A smile flickered across Gunn's face, sad and bittersweet.

"Powers?"

"The Powers That Be."

Grieving, bewildered silence fell over the room again. Oz's gentle voice broke it. "Got a suggestion...why don't we call it a night and try this again in the morning? You guys can do your research; rest up from your flight. We'll all still be here...somewhere," he added, looking at the empty coffee table. Thu had vanished. The ice cream bucket was gone, too.

Paloma leaned back in her seat and peered through the kitchen entry. "She probably crawled out a window."

Oz eased over to the shattered front door. "Give me a ride into Phoenix and I can take you to the closest decent motel," he offered. He waited, patiently, for Giles to swallow his pride.

Finally the watcher caved in and walked stiffly to the doorway. "We'll be in touch," he said to Michael. One by one the rest of the Scoobies followed him out.

When Buffy got to the door, she stopped suddenly and threw Angel a yearning look. He failed to look back, though; he was staring through the parlor's west window into the empty black night. She turned to Spike; his eyes were glued to the glowing tip of the cigarette as he twisted it slowly between his fingers, and he didn't return her look, either. Stung to the quick, she stumbled out after Mr. Yoder.

Michael stood in the middle of the room and surveyed his weeping guests. "Well. That was a Dr. Phil evening."

* * *

Giles reached the van first and held its door open for the others, but Willow turned her head away from him in disgust and stalked past him. She jerked open the passenger door of Yoder's car and got into it instead, yanking the door shut with a bang. Yoder shot her an annoyed look. Then he pulled out behind the van, and for several minutes neither of them spoke.

"He's supposed to be a good guy!" Willow finally blurted out. "He's..._Giles!_ Why wouldn't he at least _tell_ me that Angel called, so I could go there and check it out? How could he just let Fred lie there and _rot_?"

Yoder's voice was surprisingly sympathetic. "I can't argue with you. It was your phone call, your magic. Your decision. I think part of it's the watcher in him. Council's always picked watchers that are "father knows best" kinda guys. They trust their girls to a degree, but it's always hard for them to completely let go of the reins."

"But I'm not a slayer."

"No, you're a witch. And in a lot of ways, that's even more hazardous. Slayers are limited by the physical world; witches aren't. A witch has more power on tap than a slayer, if she knows how to use it...for better, or for worse. You're living proof of that."

Willow cringed at the memory of her murderous rampage after Tara's death. "I'm not Glinda The Good, I know. _I_ wouldn't trust me, either...but what if it wasn't about him being scared that I'd screw up? What if he was just pissed off at Angel? Would he really be that petty? I mean, would he really think it was worth someone possibly _dying_ just so he could say, 'Ha, ha, you big stupid vampire, I'm ignoring you. Shouldn't have joined that skanky ho law firm!' "

"I don't know," Yoder replied quietly. "I hope not."

* * *

The conversation in the van was even briefer. It consisted, in its entirety, of Oz's motel directions.

* * *

Paloma shinnied up a tree in Michael's back yard and made a six-foot leap from its branches to the top of the house. She walked barefoot across the roof to Thu Kheim. Thu lay on her belly, peering over an angle in the roof's ridge, watching the road. "They've all left," Paloma told her.

"Are they gone for good?"

"Uh-uh. They're gonna come back tomorrow. I think they want to ask your parents if they can train you." Paloma poked into the ice cream bucket with the spoon, but the bucket was empty.

"I'm not going anywhere with them."

"I don't think they'll ask that. I think they just wanna follow you around on patrols; see if you know what you're doin'. Maybe teach you some Council-Fu."

"They've got an assload of slayers already. Why do they care what _I'm_ doing?"

"I dunno. There's a hellmouth here. Maybe they want to send more slayers here to dick with it. Wouldn't be no skin off our noses."

Paloma's nose had in fact no skin at the moment, for she had shifted back to her natural features. The faux human nose and ears were gone, replaced by small, scaly, flat openings, and her grey saucer eyes were huge. Thu Kheim looked back over her shoulder at her friend. "What if their slayers can't tell good demons from bad ones? What if they go after _you_?"

The chupacabra shrugged. "Don't know why they'd bother, unless they're also members of the Arizona Beef Council and the Future Farmers of America. They wouldn't know I wasn't human unless I told them, anyway."

"They'd know the others weren't. We'd have to warn all your people not to hunt livestock around here so the ranchers wouldn't complain about them to the Watchers' Council."

"I guess so. God damn, I wish they'd hurry up and finish their business here. And take their personal problems back with them. All that Jerry Springer shit gave me a migraine." Paloma lay back against the roof with a groan. Nictitating membranes - the translucent inner eyelids common to her species - slid over the surface of her eyeballs. She closed the outer lids, too, and dozed off.

Thu Kheim gnawed her fingernail and continued to monitor the street below.

* * *

Miles away from Michael's house, the lights under the waterline of the Holiday Inn's swimming pool made a soothing blue glow in the dark, and cast rippling shadows on the faces of Xander and Oz. They sagged back into deck chairs and stared into the waters in a mild stupor.

"Holy frijoles," Xander said at last. "I don't even know where to begin. God...Cordelia..." He rubbed a trembling hand over his mouth. "...I guess Angel and Spike've caught you up to date on all things Sunnydale since you left."

"Yeah, pretty much. I'm sorry about Anya."

Xander felt a sudden urge to sob. He choked it back and merely nodded. "Sometimes you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, huh?"

For awhile there was silence.

"Oz, what're you doing hanging out with those guys?" Xander asked. "They're - they're Wolfram & Hart people! They're _Spike!"_

"They _tried_ Wolfram & Hart. They thought they could change it. In retrospect it was a really stupid idea, but there you go." Oz shrugged. "And Spike's actually not a bad guy once you get to know him."

Xander snorted and rolled his remaining eye. "Yeah, he's just a misunderstood boy who became a bloodthirsty monster through no fault of his own. My gums bleed for him. Somehow I'm just not able to walk a mile in those Doc Martens."

"I can."

Oz's quiet reply momentarily threw Xander for a loop. He sputtered, ashamed and embarrassed. "Oz, buddy, I didn't mean like you! You're different!"

"Not so much. His soul was gone for years; mine's gone three nights every month. We'll both have to live with the urge to hunt for the rest of our lives. And neither of us asked to get bitten."

_HYENA, _the annoying voice of conscience suddenly hissed in Xander's head. The memory of the hunt. The bloodthirst. _Shut up, Jiminy Cricket, _he silently argued back. _That was different, too...it was different. I had a demon in me. I wasn't like Spike. I never killed anyone. 'Cept for that pig. And I never tried to rape Buf- _

His argument with himself ground to a screeching halt.

* * *

Willow emerged from one of the motel rooms sometime later; she closed its door with a soft "click" and joined Oz and Xander by the pool. "Buffy's asleep," she said. She sat down in a deck chair next to Oz and pulled her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms over them. Her pale face still looked bitter and pinched from her shouting match with Giles.

"Is she okay?" Oz asked her. "She hardly said a word in the van."

Willow's expression softened at the sound of his voice, and she gave him the ghost of a High School Willow smile. "Oh, surely she said _something."_

"She called me a chatterbox."

Willow couldn't help but grin a little. She picked at a loose thread in her jeans. "I think she just got kinda wigged at seeing Angel, and...and...Spike, and Newbie Slayer, and you, and then the tearing up a perfectly good door thing. But no Glory, so the wig could've been a lot worse." Being near Oz was so soothing, she remembered. _Forsooth, he oozes soothe. He's a soothe-oozer._ "...So, what's new with you? Seeing anybody?"

Oz nodded, and Willow's heart felt a small pang. She continued bravely. "Anyone I know?"

"No, she's from New Mexico. Some of her relatives were werewolves."

Xander's eye widened. "_Plural_ werewolves? Did you meet at a convention?"

"No, a dog show," Oz deadpanned.

In spite of his gloom, Xander began to warm to the subject. "So has she got any special powers? Does she fly? Breathe fire? Break buildings with her head?"

Oz thought it over. "Her teeth are removable."

Willow smiled at him encouragingly. "Well, that's a start."

* * *

Buffy lay silent in the dark, not sleeping. If she lay still enough, her thoughts would go away. She could will them to go. And if they left, so would the guilt and longing and anger and lust and desire.

_It isn't fair. I gave up __**everything.**__ My love life, my school, my freedom, my girlhoodiness. There's supposed to be a reward at the end of it, right? _

Loneliness crept over the edge of the bed, black and bleak and heavy, and almost sucked the very breath out of her.

_They lied to me. They broke their promises. Angel said he'd wait for me. Spike said he'd be there for me always. _

Once there was a movie that she and Dawn had gotten stuck watching one evening a long, long time ago, because Mom thought Clint Eastwood was oh-my-god hot. It was some kind of western with singing and dork-dancing - although the song about the wind had been sort of pretty - but the main thing was that the blonde girl in the movie wanted both guys, Clint and some old man in dirty underwear, and they finally all decided that she could get married to both of them.

_And we could all live happily ever after. _

She bit her lip until it she tore it, refusing to let herself cry. And that night, she dreamed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

_It was windy up here at the top of the tower, and it cooled her sweating face a little as she watched phantoms and dragons tumble out of the rip in the sky. Sheet lightning flashes revealed clouds the color of old bruises, yellow and purple; ugly colors. There was so much here that was ugly...the hardest thing in this world was to live in it. The end of the tower stretched out before her, and it no longer looked frightening the way it had only moments ago. It called to her. She sprinted down its runway, past the sister-that-was-not-her-sister; hit its edge like an Olympic high platform diving board, and swanned off._

_The fall was longer than she thought it'd be. There was even time to notice a pleasant tingling sensation as she passed through a layer of...something. Then a sudden jarring that ended as abruptly as it came, and-_

_The dream shifted._

_She was lying on her back in a stuffy, airless sleeping bag, dark as pitch and zipped up tight clear over her head, and the bag refused to yield when she pressed her palms against it and tried to shove her way out. She clawed at it, pulling away handfuls of fabric, only to discover a solid surface underneath. The surface wouldn't budge. Her legs were pinned down. She couldn't sit up. She fought back panic and a terror that she'd never imagined possible, and began to piston her fists against the surface - aGAIN, aGAIN, aGAIN, aGAIN, aGAIN-_

Thu Kheim sunfished out of her bed and hit the floor with a little scream. She floundered in the twisted sheets and blankets, completely disoriented, and knocked over a lamp and her bedside table, sending a Cracker Jack box, a half-empty can of root beer, and a paperback copy of _'Salem's Lot _bouncing off toward her bedroom closet. The lamp was a touch-on-touch-off model, and it landed on her arm and instantly flooded the floor with light. She winced at it and threw herself clear of the covers, gasping. The fresh air was back. She could move again. She was wide awake now, and the crazy dream was over.

* * *

Fred and Spike left Wight's house not long after the watchers' group had. Angel had still been standing at the window when they departed, gazing west - toward California, perhaps - and saying nothing. In his silence he seemed to have aged a dozen years.

Fred twisted a soggy paper napkin in her lap and stole glances at Spike through red, watery eyes. His face was so alive and expressive that it could never hide anything, and now as he gripped the wheel, steering their little car toward home, it appeared to be hashing out a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions. Finally he drew in a vestigial breath and spoke.

"Well, you've met Rupert Giles now, for whatever it's worth."

"Yeah. He was kinda like I thought he'd be. How I imagined him, I mean. I guess." She paused. "You didn't...you didn't know they were coming, did you?"

"God, no! They just showed up at the door. Huffed 'n puffed and almost blew the bloody house down." Spike reached a hand out and cupped her face. "Love, I swear. They took me by surprise as much as they did you."

Buffy - the elephant in the room that no one wanted to acknowledge - wasn't mentioned by name. But her presence could not have been stronger if she'd been squatting between them on the console. What was it she'd come for, aside of Illyria and Thu Khiem? Angel? Spike? American fast food? She'd been like a zombie the entire time Fred had seen her; in fact, Fred couldn't recall her voice at all.

In the two years since the southern Cal hellmouth's collapse, the Sunnydale slayer had not come up in conversation very often - she was part of a time and a place that Fred had never known, and Spike had seemed content to let that place stay buried. Sometimes she slipped in, by accident, riding on the coattails of a distantly-related topic: "Sometimes I just don't get how men's brains work, Spike. Did you think Buffy wouldn't _mind_ that you were havin' sex with Harmony while you were making your travel plans to go to Europe and be her boyfriend? You didn't even seem concerned about it or anything! That's - that's just _stupid._ ...Not to mention, shitty." Spike had looked embarrassed and simply nodded, then mumbled something about it being one of the million and one things he wished he could take back.

Now she wondered if she, Fred, was another of those things he wished he could take back.

_I'm second choice. __**She's**__ the one he got a soul for, and pined for. If she wants him now, if he decides to go away with her, there's nothing I could do to stop it. How do I compete with his dream girl? _

For the first time since high school - except for the junior year she'd spent at her cousins' in San Antonio, until her parents had discovered that _she'd_ discovered the wonders of marijuana there - she felt like a nerd. An awkward, uninteresting, flat-chested, four-eyed nerd. A nerd who babbled when she was nervous, and babbled when she wasn't nervous, and who frequently confused even her friends in the A/V Club with her theories about time and anti-matter and alien abduction conspiracies and the works of Stephen Hawking.

_How can I compete with THE SLAYER? What can a physics geek possibly offer that a slayer can't, other than better living through chemistry? _What was the way to a vampire's heart? Mournfully, Fred recalled the advice her mother's beauty shop hair stylist, a sweet little grandmotherly woman, had given her just before she'd left Texas for Los Angeles and college: "Dear, as you go through life hand-in-hand with the man you love, always remember one thing: a stiff dick has no conscience."

* * *

He couldn't shake her scent from his nostrils. It was powerful, and it filled his soul with desire and longing...and a hot little coal of anger.

He'd thought their dance had ended.

The anger discombobulated him. He tried to concentrate on the memory of his final night with Buffy, a sweet night in the end, holding her and watching her as she slept like a lamb in his arms

_(and dreamed of Angel?)_

but it somehow felt...off.

"Spike, you missed our turn."

Fred's gentle voice pulled him back into the present. He flinched with the guilt of a boy caught stealing money from his grandmother's pocketbook, and with a single motion of his arm he whipped the car across the median and back to the Happy Trails Tourist Court's driveway. They parked and got out under the buzzing neon gaze of the Vacancy sign.

Barely inside the door of their cabin, he caught Fred by the wrist and pulled her to him. She came willingly, eyes wide and wondering as he bent his head to kiss her. His mouth assaulted hers with surprising roughness. Thoughts of Buffysex danced wantonly through his head; he shook them off and found himself gripping handfuls of Fred's hair, and for an instant he actually felt his teeth lengthen. He pressed the tip of one of them into the plump of her lip and remembered the luscious sensation of skin parting and the sudden warm release of blood. _Mustn't bite, _he reminded himself. He withdrew the fangs and went at her mouth even more greedily with his lips and tongue. When he'd had his fill there, he burrowed against her throat, muttering into the sweet pulse.

"Warm, so warm...My merry sunshine, you are." The one he knew wouldn't burn him.

Merry Sunshine was mashing against him now, moaning. Small, slender hands were tugging at his fly and yanking his shirt, until he dragged her to the bed and finished the job himself. He lay her flat on her back and plunged into her, arms locked straight and supporting his body on his fists, pumping rapidly and confidently and-

And it wasn't enough.

He stopped and looked into her face with strange eyes, searching eyes, and in a voice that was almost a plea, he rasped, "Say my name."

"Spike," she said softly.

"Say it again."

"Spike."

He took up their rhythm once more, slower now and more relaxed. Closed his eyes. Wrapped his arms around her. Felt her rock against him and listened to her moan and whisper with every deep stroke, "Spike. Spike. Spike..." until finally she trembled with climax, went limp, and breathed softly as prayer into his ear, "William."

* * *

Angel made no attempt to sleep. He merely moved from the parlor window to a chair on the front porch, where he continued to watch the western sky and marvel over how things had gotten so complicated.

* * *

Illyria broke into Fred's consciousness a few hours before morning, curious and out-of-sorts.

"Tonight's mating was peculiar."

Fred jumped, a little startled and annoyed, and shot back a telepathic reply. "Y'know, a 'Pssst, Fred, it's me' would be nice every once in a while. How long have you been here?"

"Seven hours. I waited in the sea monkey tank. The brine shrimp agree that tonight's mating was peculiar, too."

Fred peered incredulously at the aquarium on the dresser and made a mental note to put a towel over it. "Spike's just kind of upset...an old girlfriend of his is in town, and he's not sure what to make of it. No one does, really."

"Then kill her."

Fred groaned. "You can't just bump off a rival - I _know_ they do it on "Animal Planet" all the time, but our species isn't like that."

"Which is why your kind is so weak. Instead of eliminating a threat, as any intelligent being would do, you attempt to coexist with it. And in the end it usurps you."

There was just no way to explain this to someone of Illyria's mindset. Fred sighed and rolled over. "Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles."

As the shell drifted back off to sleep, Illyria sent infinitesimal fingers through its brain and nervous system, evaluating the memories stored there, trying to size up the magnitude of the threat. The Fred creature was dimly aware of this, but made no effort to put a halt to it. The Old One absorbed what she could of the shell's definition of "girlfriend," and of this girlfriend in particular. What she found interested her. She decided to postpone her exploration of the Horseshoe Nebula and remain on Earth awhile instead.


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's Note: I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter - I unexpectedly had to have surgery a few months ago, and then follow-up treatments which often made me feel ill, and so I haven't had a chance to write again until lately. (The surgery was successful, and my treatments will be finished by the end of February, so hopefully the next chapters will get written and posted in a timelier manner. Thank you all for your patience!)_

**Chapter 7**

At about 9:30 that morning Oz joined Giles and Xander in the coffee shop of the Comfort Inn, in a booth whose surface was covered with equal parts notebook and breakfast buffet. "We seem to be absent the womenfolk," he commented, glancing around the room and then back at his tablemates. Xander responded with a jaw-cracking yawn.

"They're still in their P.J.s and hair rollers. They said they'd meet up with us later."

An image of Willow in baggy pajamas instantly took shape in Oz's mind; an image made dear and sweet through the warm haze of nostalgia. Sunnydale's Willow. The Willow of high-handlebar bicycles and levitating pencils. A Willow who dreamed of tadpoles.

Last night's Willow was different somehow. She'd been vague about her post-Oz adventures, for one thing, saying very little about them, whereas the last time they'd crossed paths she'd been as eager to talk as he. She was upset about Fred, of course, and angry with Giles, but it seemed more than that. Oz couldn't put his finger on it, but something essential and fundamental about her was missing.

He wondered if it had died with Tara.

Giles was sighing over his toast and sausage. "It looks as if I'll have to ask you to intercede for me, Oz. I attempted a discussion with Thu Kheim's father by telephone this morning, but all I got out of him were instructions to do something to myself that was...anatomically impossible. The man appears to have a deeply-rooted dislike of anything to do with the Watchers' Council."

"I'll try," Oz answered. "I don't think there's any need to worry about Thu, though. I've watched her work a couple of times, and she seems to have the slaying gig down pretty well. Angel and Spike and Paloma have been showing her the ropes."

Giles grimaced as though he'd bitten into something sour. "Yes, well, all the same, I'd feel more reassured knowing that she's had at least _some_ training by a fellow slayer, rather than being taught solely by a handful of demons whose morals are questionable at best."

Xander stuffed a forkload of syrupy waffles into his mouth. "Amen to that," he muttered around it.

"I think I can vouch for their morals," Oz said slowly.

"I dunno." Xander swallowed and poured more syrup onto his plate. "Angel and Spike - that's a whole heap a' vouchin'. And what's that Mexican chick again - a chupacabra? Don't they specialize in cattle mutilation?"

"To be fair, that _is_ only a theory." Giles began thumbing through several papers lying beside his breakfast plate. He singled out one and scanned its contents. "The chupacabras are a very secretive species, but as they've not been known to directly attack or harm humans the council hasn't yet felt a need to conduct extensive research on them. Mr. Yoder is adamant about interviewing this one. She's the first we've met that was capable of mimicking _Homo sapiens_."

Xander stopped chewing and looked momentarily confused. "She pretends to be gay?"

"Where's Yoder now?" Oz asked.

"He said he'd be along shortly. He was memorizing maps of the area when last I saw him." A waitress came by to refill their coffee cups, and Giles paused until she'd moved on. "Personally, I think our first concern should be this 'Old One' creature - I'd like to know if any of her followers are still alive, and if they intend to release others like her. I also want to find out who was responsible for the robot made to impersonate Roger Wyndam-Pryce. You said Ms. Burkle told you that neither Angel nor his cohorts were able to discover what organization was behind it...I find that very troubling. I consider it a direct attack against the council."

"I find two of Roger Wyndam-Pryce in _any_ circumstance very troubling. That guy's the biggest hard-ass since Principal Snyder," Xander declared with a little shudder.

"Be that as it may be," Giles replied, "But he's one of the few experienced watchers left, and I intend to protect this new council at all costs."

* * *

In their Comfort Inn motel room, Buffy sat up in bed sluggishly, while Willow leaned over the sink and brushed her teeth and reminisced.

"Poor Wesley. And poor Cordelia! I keep remembering the last time I saw her, smiling and friendly and propped up in bed like some big princess, and all the time it wasn't even her. Well, yeah, her, but demon-possessed...and kinda overweight."

She spat out toothpaste and squinted at herself in the mirror. "Buffy, I really don't think I can be around Giles right now. The whole thing with Fred is just too screwy. I'm just gonna mostly visit with her and Oz, and scope out the local hellmouth situation and stuff, okay?"

"Sure." Fred. What the hell kind of name was "Fred"?

"Buffy..." Willow sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. "Are you going to try to talk to Angel?"

Angel...he'd known that Spike was alive right from the start. Andrew must have known, too.

"...'Cause if you do, don't be too mad at him, okay? Oz says he really was trying to do the right thing when he took over the Wolfram & Hart company. And I know he's still crazy about you."

Maybe "crazy" was the operative word. Everything seemed to be going crazy lately.

* * *

In their Happy Trails motel room, Spike lay in the bed, watching Winifred as she mixed a cup of blood and shredded wheat.

The first time he'd seen her, he recalled, was when he'd materialized in a swirl of ash and fire in Angel's office: amidst the frightening herky-jerky images of strange, frozen men and furniture there'd been a pair of skinny female legs and a ridiculously short miniskirt, the young woman wearing it gaping at him with the same open-mouthed amazement as the men.

He closed his eyes and remembered a nicer view of her, nude and wet in the showerbath of her laboratory. He wasn't perving on her, he'd reminded himself later. Foremost on his mind had been to just bloody _communicate_ with her, to tell her what he knew of the spectral killer in their midst, and should that killer enter the bathroom, to keep it away from her somehow. Still, there'd been a tiny part of him...that couldn't help but ogle, just a little. She was so damned pretty with her hair pinned up and the water beading down her body. And he was so, so fond of her. That small yearning part of him wanted to tear out of his clothes and press himself up against her, and feel soap and steam and dampened hair and warm, pink skin and just...

Feel.

He wouldn't have, though. He respected her too much. Even his urge to flirt he'd always held in check somewhat, because she was a lady and because she was his friend, and friends were far harder to find than fuck buddies. But Jesus, he'd wondered how Charlie had been insane enough to break up with her, and he'd envied Percy and that little lab rat Knox when her desire had turned to them.

He'd given up on winning Buffy by that time; put away the dream of seeing her thaw completely and treat him like a man, _her_ man, out in the open in front of God and everybody. But today she was back...and the same tiny part of him that had peeked at Fred in the shower was now trying to take the dream back out and turn it around and around in his hands.

_Imagine, _it whispered. _Just imagine if she were as loving as the woman you've got now AND as fiery and wild in bed and in battle as you remember her. You love a good fight, keeps thing interesting; all those hot 'n' heavy bickerings and sparring matches. What if now they'd end in her panting into your ear that she loves you? What if it's you and not Angel after all? What if-_

"Are you awake yet?"

Fred was perched on the edge of the bed beside him. Her favorite T-shirt, the words "PI R ROUND, _CORNBREAD_ R SQUARE" printed across its front, bagged loosely down to her knees, and her smile as she handed him his morning mug o' blood trembled a little.

* * *

"You're positive they won't try to talk her into going back to their slayer brainwashing school with them?"

"They've given me their word."

"And their witch isn't going to do any more hocus-pocus on her?"

"She's promised to put her pocus on hold."

Mr. and Mrs. Kheim exchanged looks…they appeared to be on the verge of caving in. "Daniel, do you completely trust these Council people?"

_Once a Scooby, always a Scooby. Right? _Five whole years had gone by. People can change in five years.

Oz hesitated for one undetectable fraction of an instant.

"Yes."

* * *

_Don't think about men. Don't. Concentrate on the mission. Slayer-bonding-quality time. _Buffy steered her rental car slowly and carefully - _very_ slowly and carefully, as she'd never had much experience behind a wheel - out of Thu Khiem's driveway, through the little town, down a backroad and into the low hills of the Arizona desert. To avoid talking, which might distract her and send the car crashing into a mailbox in a flaming ball of gasoline, she had turned the radio up rather loudly. It was now impossible for even a fourteen-year-old girl like the one beside her to start a conversation. She saw Thu Khiem glance at the creeping speedometer from time to time, and she straightened her back and gripped the steering wheel more affirmatively.

When she found a secluded spot that suited her, Buffy slowly and carefully parked. Once out of the driver's seat, her confidence returned. She marched to the trunk of the car and began taking out exercise gear and objects of war, and said to Thu, "We'll start with weapons. What kind have you got?"

Dutifully Thu dug around in the equipment bag she'd brought along. "Uhhhhhh, let's see: lots of sticks…a bowling ball…a machete…more sticks…" She raised a small cardboard box triumphantly. "Oh, and gopher matches! I'm gonna figure out a way to use these if it kills me. It's, like, the total package: fire _and_ wood!"

Buffy wrinkled her brow in confusion. "Gopher matches?"

"Yeah, you know, you strike one and then go 'fer' another."

"Oh. That's…creative." The lack of enthusiasm in Buffy's voice hinted that she didn't think it was all _that _creative. Thu meekly returned the box of matches to her bag.

Seating herself on the edge of the car's trunk, Buffy laid a long leather case across her lap and opened it. "Every slayer eventually settles on what comes to be her favorite weapon. This one means the most to me." She lifted the large, bladed instrument from the case and held it reverently in the air, turning it so that sunlight gleamed across its red and silver surface. Then she handed it to Thu. "This scythe was forged by the Guardians, a mystical race of women who watched the Watchers and waited for the time when they'd be needed, until one by one they were all killed off. I met the last of them in Sunnydale, when I found the scythe in time to use it against The First Evil. The guardian was able to tell me about the scythe just before she died. It's got magical properties that only a slayer can make use of. It was designed for us. For those who've been called. The Chosen."

"This is an ax."

"Huh?" Buffy blinked.

Thu was studying the weapon with a curious, unreadable face. She held it out sideways. "It's not a scythe; it's an ax. A scythe is that big curvy thing the Grim Reaper carries."

Buffy's majestic oration vanished. She began to feel flustered. "It is so a scythe."

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is."

"_No,_ it's _not."_ Thu's expressionless face was unwavering. "A scythe has a blade shaped like a long, skinny letter C. Axes have stumpy blades. And a scythe's shaft has two little handlebar thingies on it that you hold it by. If that lady called this a scythe, she needed to study more about weaponry." She handed it back to Buffy. "It's a good ax, though," she said politely.

Offended and embarrassed, Buffy snatched the scythe-ax to her breast and glared at the younger slayer. Then she turned on her heel and stomped off. "We've got work to do."

* * *

Thu Khiem was properly attentive and obedient for the rest of the afternoon, as her tutor grilled her in stalking, combat techniques, and demon lore. They sparred with fervor, taking out cacti and rock formations in their wake; they held meditation positions until both could swear they heard the sky itself breathe. Eventually they flopped, bruised and sweating, back into the car's front seat. Buffy took a long, draining swig from her water bottle. "Is there much hellmouth activity around here, aside from the usual vampires flocking like moths to a flame?"

"Not lately. Sometimes a fetch or a kachina'll pass through. I usually just leave them alone and let one of the older guys decide what to do about them."

Buffy frowned a little. "You should be the one making the decisions. About _everything._ After all, this is your territory."

"Not really," Thu answered. "The kachinas have been here way longer than I have, and anyway, they're good guys. I always try to check with Mr. Singh or Paloma or someone first, before I just splatter something. I'm not, like, the Law West of the Pecos."

Buffy fixed Thu Khiem with a stern eye. "But you _are_ the law. You're The Slayer. Friends are nice to have, but ultimately everything rests on YOU. Your friends weren't given this responsibility to protect the world from demons; _you_ were. So like it or not, you're judge, jury, and executioner...and head cheerleader, if you get a chance to try out." In spite of the little attempt at flippancy, her voice held more than a trace of bitterness.

Thu stared back at her, uncertain. "I don't make laws. I just kill vampires." She picked at the cap of her own bottle and added thoughtfully, "If slayers were supposed to make the laws, you'd have been called Buffy the Vampire Lawyer. Or Buffy Summers, Attorney at Slay. Or-"

"Never mind." God, it was like arguing with Dawn all over again.

"You don't like being a slayer very much, do you?"

The question jolted her. Buffy straightened up in her seat once more and cleared her throat. "Of course I like it. It's an honor to be chosen." Suddenly all the rhetoric and verbal crap of Quentin Traver's Council of Watchers ran through her mind: _"In all the world, only one girl is deemed worthy…we have given you a power that most people can only dream of…yours is the greatest of gifts…you represent us; make us proud." _She felt her shoulders sagging. "Well, 'course it's got its downside, just like every job…what made you ask that?"

Thu shrugged. "You just sounded like it. Plus when you talk about it, your face goes all Sergeant Rock."

Buffy gazed through the windshield for a long moment before replying.

"It was hard being the only one."

Another few beats of silence. Then: "I wasn't given a choice, see. No one asked me if I wanted to do it. That's why Willow and I made the spell that divided the power among all the potential slayers with us when we fought The First Evil: it not only gave us more warriors; it gave us more voices. Every potential there was given a choice, and they all chose to accept the spell and to stay and fight. Now we run the council, instead of the council running us."

Thu's quiet words stung her again. "You didn't give a choice to the rest of us."

She knew who some of the rest were, and she had a feeling that Thu Kheim did, too. The traumatized Buddhist nun from Thailand who begged them to reverse the spell on her. The slayerized insane girl in Los Angeles who escaped from a mental hospital and butchered three people. The teenager in Egypt who didn't know she had super-strength until she slapped her younger brother in annoyance and broke his neck. Giles often referred to these cases as "the sad but unavoidable casualties of war." Buffy sometimes wondered if one day he would begin calling them "acceptable losses."

"I know. I'm sorry. We didn't think about that then, and we didn't know there were so many potentials in the world besides the ones we'd found. We didn't think about the spell reaching as far as it did." She looked over at the young girl beside her. "Thu, you don't have to slay if you don't want to. We can assign someone else to this area. A whole team of slayers, even."

"There's already a team here, I keep telling you guys that. Paloma and Gunn and Kay and Fred and Oz and Angel and Spike and Illyria and Mr. Wight and Mr. Singh. Even if Illyria's kind of a weirdo. Anyway, I'm sort of stuck with slaying now. Vampires can tell somehow if you're a slayer, and for a lot of them it's like this big deal to kill one. I'm a trophy they want to bag. So no matter what I do, there'll always be one or two of them gunning for me."

_Lesson the first._ "Did Spike tell you that?"

"Uh-huh. So did Angel. And they're vampires, so I guess they know what they're talking about."

_Don't think about men. Don't. Not Angel, and not Spike. _Buffy closed her eyes. When she opened them, Thu was propping her feet up across the dashboard. The little girl's wary demeanor was gone, and her face looked friendly.

"You want to eat supper at my house tonight? Mom's making Soylent Yellow."

For the first time since her arrival, Buffy cracked a genuine smile.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

While the two young slayers dueled in the desert, Spike granted Yoder his first interview. They conducted it in the parlor of Dilip Singh, proprietor of the Happy Trails Tourist Court (Established 1955), New Delhi native, and resident sorcerer. Spike slumped into one of Singh's easy chairs and watched soundlessly as Yoder bustled with note pads, pencils, and recording equipment. When everything was laid out to his satisfaction, the diminutive librarian sat cross-legged on a floor pillow and pulled the coffee table up to him to use as a desk. He clicked the remote control of the video camera, waited for the tiny green "Record" light to pop on, and recited to it the official documentation: "April 30th, 2005, 11:15 AM Mountain Time; location: Ashcraft, Arizona; interview with the vampire known as Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody; conducted by myself, Mr. Paul Yoder of the Council of Watchers."

Spike glanced into the camera lens and said tonelessly, "Cheers."

Pencil now in hand, Yoder made an admirable attempt to hide his eagerness and remain the professional, neutral scribe/reporter. "First off," he began, "I'd like to learn about the method you used to reinstate your soul."

The vampire known as Spike shrugged. "Thought you lot already had a method of your own. Don't Red still do it with one of those magic eight balls of hers?"

Yoder nodded. "An Orb of Thesulah. There's a few of those around, but our copies of the text that goes with them, _The Annals for the Rituals of the Undead,_ have all been lost. The council's were destroyed in The First Evil's attacks, Willow's was buried with Sunnydale, and we guess that the copy she gave Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is probably in the hands of Wolfram & Hart. Willow's tried to write down the spell from memory, but she's not sure how accurate it is. She hasn't been able to resoul anyone with it yet."

"Well, dunno if I'll be much help, either. The whole thing for me was sort of a blur." Spike's face and body stiffened; it was clear that he didn't relish discussing the subject. "I'd got upset about something - which'll remain bloody private, thank you - an' I remember scouting about in Sunnydale's darker corners 'til I learned about a wizard who had a brother who knew of a shaman that could give me what I wanted if I entertained him enough. Entertainment for him turned out to be me fisticuffing with all his best beasties."

"What shaman?" Yoder fired off. "Where? Wizard's name?"

"Hold your water, Watcher. Wasn't told any names. I paid the bloke enough and he teleported me to the middle of Africa, judging by the look of the place. I remember villagers yellin' at me not to go into the cave I'd been told to go into. So I went in, and I fought Mister Shaman's ghouls…" Spike fell silent for a moment, and his voice grew tighter, lower. He looked at neither Yoder nor the camera, but at the wall. "Then he said he was satisfied, and that I'd get what I came for."

His voice was so low now that Yoder had to strain to understand him.

"It hurt. Oh, God, how it hurt. I didn't remember that having a soul hurt that way. Realizing in the space of an instant what you've done…the _enormity_ of what you've done…to all...all the people you've...all those years; all those people…"

He looked down at his knees in silence. The nauseating, heart-sickening feel of guilt and grief and hopelessness and self-loathing flooded over him, threatening to drown him. _Put it in a drawer,_ Paloma had advised him. _Just file it in a drawer in your head, comprende? No good keeping it out in the middle of the damn floor all the time; it's just gonna get in your way. You gonna keep tripping over it and not be able to accomplish a damn thing. _There hadn't been anyone to tell him that at the beginning, though, when he'd needed it most...just himself, and the basement (with sounds of life above his head as students and teachers crashed and laughed like flocks of blameless birds), and the stinking, terrifying First. Dimly he heard Yoder ask, "How'd he do it?"

"He touched my chest." Spike chuckled. "No fuss, no muss. Just me screamin' on the ground, going batshit insane. I suppose then he teleported me back to Sunny Cal, before I could drool and piss all over his cavern."

Yoder slid a pencil and a pad of paper across the table to him. "Could you make a sketch of what he looked like?"

Spike regarded the librarian for a moment, then picked up the pad, scribbled something, and tossed it back. To Yoder's great disappointment, he'd merely drawn a tall, black blob with stick arms and two little eye circles. Beside the blob was a small stick figure whose eyes were represented by Xs.

"That's me," Spike explained.

Yoder sighed and added Spike's name and the date at the page's bottom. "Well, at least we've got an idea of his relative height, and narrowed him down to a possible continent."

"Sorry, Mate; I'd give you more details if I could. This is the best I can do. Told you it was bloody traumatic." Spike sounded genuinely sincere. "The boys that arranged it all have long since vanished into the netherworld. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for 'em." He stretched out his legs and shoved his hands into his pants' pockets. "Anything else?"

Yoder flipped the pad to a blank page. "What can you tell me about Illyria?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "Now _that,_" he answered, "Is Fred's domain. I can tell you a bit about the meat locker and Tupperware that Old Ones are stored in, and how we were able to knock 'Lyri's powers down a peg, but Fred knows her best. I'm not her Grand Quahog."

"Excuse me?"

"Grand Qwa'ha Xahn," Dilip called out from his desk in the office adjoining the parlor. "An Old One's high priest and guide."

"Do you know-" Yoder called back hopefully.

"No. No more than anyone else here. Talk to Fred."

* * *

"So, Fred…build any good particle accelerators lately?"

Willow flashed a quick smile at her fellow Mensa as she climbed into Fred's pickup truck. She'd pointedly avoided the Giles-infested coffee shop, and chosen instead to phone Winifred for a tour of Phoenix's centers of paranormal activity.

Fred smiled back gratefully. "No, but I've gotten involved in a really interesting project with a local research company. We're trying to design a more efficient solar energy panel and I'm attempting to apply a formula that we used in L.A. to make necro-tempered glass, which absorbs so much sunlight that even vampires are safe behind it…"

It was a relief to be able to discuss such mundane stuff. She didn't want to talk about Buffy; didn't want to _think_ about Buffy, and she was glad that so far Willow hadn't mentioned her.

When they'd exhausted the subject of solar panels, Willow said sadly, "Fred, I'm really, really sorry about Giles not letting me help you. If I'd known, there's no way I would have let him stop me."

"It's all right," Fred assured her. "It wasn't your fault."

"No, it's not all right. It's wrong to act like someone doesn't matter. Giles isn't usually that way."

Her reply triggered a question that had plagued Fred for two years. "Willow, why didn't you tell us about Spike when you came to L.A.?"

Willow gave her a blank and somewhat baffled look. "What about him?"

_Unbelievable! _Fred hardly knew where to begin. "That he was a good guy? A souled vampire ally was helping you fight The First Evil? You didn't think that was something important enough to mention? I mean, you told us about gathering the slayers-to-be and what kinds of magic you were hoping would work and Buffy killing a Turok-Han...but you never said a word about Spike being there."

A slow flush crept across Willow's face. "I didn't? I guess - I don't know - well, he stayed down in the basement so much, and, and, he was all b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b for awhile..." She flipped her finger rapidly up and down against her lips to indicate insanity. "...I guess I just forgot." She seemed to realize how stupid that sounded.

* * *

_Did I forget? _

Now that she gave it some thought, she supposed she must have. She'd been shocked at discovering that Buffy had slept with Spike (and was a bit shocked now to discover that Fred was sleeping with him), but for the most part Spike hadn't really registered on her radar since they'd brought Buffy back from the dead - Willow'd had her hands full with that, and then Tara and magic and the dark days; England and the coven; the flesh-eating demon; Kennedy everywhere she turned... She tried in vain to recall whether she'd mentioned Spike to Faith during their drive back to Sunnydale.

She remembered how oddly safe and liberating it had felt during that visit to Angel's hotel; away from home and reminders of the DarkWillow time and how she kept losing

_(spun out of; didn't just lose it)_

control.

In Los Angeles she'd regained her confidence: she was relatively unknown; a clean, new slate. No one there knew her sordid details. She'd even felt daring enough to half-joke, half-confess her sins to Wesley, although she didn't think he really quite believed her. Once she got back to Sunnydale that confidence fell apart again, as she'd feared it would, but L.A...

_I __**ROCKED**__ in L.A._

"Gotta make a stop here," Fred announced suddenly, and pulled the truck into the parking lot of a meat processing company. "Blood run." She parked and waved to an employee entering the building.

"Blood run?" Willow echoed.

"Uh-huh. We buy Spike's and Angel's blood here. They save it and freeze it in five-gallon pickle buckets for us, an' then we take it home and thaw it out and re-freeze it in single-serve sandwich baggies."

Willow screwed up her face. "Eww."

"Tell me about it," Fred agreed. "We never know _what_ kind of blood we're going to get. The guys like beef okay, but lots of times it gets mixed in with pork or sheep and tastes pretty bland. Deer blood's their favorite. It's got a good gamey whang." She slid her purse strap over her shoulder and hopped out of the truck.

_Venison. _A small, trusting fawn lying down in her lap. The life's-blood of that innocent sacrifice running wet over her fingers. Old Yeller. Sounder. Bambi.

"I think I'll just wait here in the car."

Ten minutes later, as one of the butchers helped them load the sealed buckets into the truck's back seat, Willow whispered, "What do you say when they ask you what you're going to do with it?"

"Feed it to our hogs. I made up a story about raisin' piglets and putting blood in their slops to give them extra iron." Fred raised her voice. "Thanks, Earl." She waited until the butcher "yer welcome"d her and walked out of earshot. Then she added, "I was going to tell them we raised vampire bats and sold them to zoos, but I was afraid they'd think that sounded suspicious."

Willow smiled. "It would've been closer to the truth, but, yeah." _I must really seem like a feeb to Fred, _she said to herself, _Forgetting to tell them that there was another souled vampire in the world. It's just that...it was just SPIKE. _

For some reason, that statement also seemed feeble. Which in turn made her damned uncomfortable.

* * *

When Yoder began to try to coax supernatural knowledge from Dilip, Spike slipped out and went back to his motel room apartment. The interview had shaken him badly, and he needed sanctuary. He shut the apartment's door. After a moment, he reached out again and locked it. Then he stood in the middle of the comfortable old room with his eyes shut, and breathed in its scents.

Pine. Hair spray. Laundry soap. Spaghetti sauce. The room's familiar peacefulness wrapped slowly around him like a warm blanket, quiet and soothing. God didn't seem so quick to condemn in here, somehow. Saints and slayers never entered to cluck their tongues in disgust.

He stood there a few more minutes, and then opened his eyes and shook the despondency off. Let Angel wallow in _that_ pond. Spike had better things to do.

The battery was low in the cordless telephone on the nightstand; he unplugged its base and plugged in the plastic novelty phone shaped like a pair of big red lips that Fred had found at a rummage sale and insisted on bringing home because it was so hilariously tacky. He lifted the upper lip and pressed it against his ear and dialed a number.

On the fifth ring, Charles Gunn finally answered. "Hey, Man. That little dude through pickin' your brain yet?" His voice crackled with signal interference. Spike imagined him driving past some skyscraper or under a bridge.

"For now, I s'pose. I reckon he'll try to chew through all of us one by one."

Through the phone came the sound of Gunn's chuckle. "Well, I ain't hangin' around waitin' to get inquisitioned by Bilbo Baggins. I was just about to call you - we got a hot tip on some witchcraft supplies for sale. The real thing, sounds like; none of that pussy 'magicks' spelled with a c-k-s shit." Static broke up the connection completely for several seconds.

"Sorry. Damn cell phone. Anyhow, I'm on my way to pick you up; Paloma's waiting for us at that little demon cafe on the west side of Phoenix, with the guy that gave us the lead. She said be sure to bring you."

"What, she expectin' me to do the haggling? I don't know shite about magic. Why can't _she_ play fishwife?"

"I don't know. She just said make sure you come."

Spike grunted. "All right, then. Hope our dealer's not some stodgy old fart with a stick up his arse." He hung the receiver back in its cradle and made the telephone mouth whole again, and the oversized plastic lips pouted up at him with an enigmatic smile.

* * *

The cafe was neatly hidden in the basement of an otherwise abandoned building. Its back alley offered a covered curbside drop-off area for sun-sensitive customers, along with sewer access for those who had no objection to stench. Gunn and Spike descended a dimly-lit flight of stairs into the cafe proper. Strings of forty-watt colored light bulbs criss-crossed the ceiling, giving the place a garishly cheerful atmosphere. Paloma waved at them from a corner booth with a pleased little smile. They could just make out the back of a head across from her.

"Must be our connection," Gunn commented. "What's she grinning about? She looks like the cat that swallowed the canary."

The booth's table was littered with plates and burger baskets. Most of them were empty save for some fried pieces of breading and a few tufts of fur, but Paloma's guest had a fresh plate before him, and was talking animatedly and waving a french fry in the air for emphasis. His little triangular ears flapped up and down, and his skin rippled in a hundred different creases and rolls. He turned and looked at Spike and Gunn with friendly hound dog eyes, and beamed.

"Well, dog gone it, Spike! You're a sight for sore eyes! I sure have missed ya, buddy!"

A smile began to creep slowly across Spike's face. Perhaps this wasn't such a bastard of a day, after all.

"Bloody hell. Clem."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Like so many other displaced southern California demons, this one had eventually been drawn to the next-nearest hellmouth: Arizona. Gunn and Spike settled into the café booth and got comfortable as the vampire's old friend recounted his odyssey from Sunnydale to Phoenix.

"…so after the sideshow folded, I got a job as a camp counselor - but hey, enough about me. Pigs' knuckles?" Clem smiled generously and held out a still partially-loaded plate.

"None, thanks," Spike replied. "What's this about your havin' magic beans for sale?"

"Oh, heck, Spike, it's a lot more'n that. Books and scrolls and wands and jars full of twigs an' powder…it's not mine, though. I saw it in a shop near here. A whole crate-load of stuff. The guy was still unpacking it and hadn't priced anything. I told a friend of mine about it, and he said_ he_ had a friend who might be interested. That's how I wound up talkin' to Paloma." Clem unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit gum and popped it into his mouth. "Wanna go have a look-see?"

* * *

The magic shop was none too tidy, and its dusty shelves held a bewildering array of merchandise. The obliging shopkeeper, a young man covered in tattoos, led them to a back room, where crumpled newspaper littered the floor and spilled out of a large wooden shipping box. Its wares were spread across a rectangular folding table. Subtlety pleased looks passed between Paloma, Spike, and Gunn as they inspected the pieces; this was definitely worth bringing the sorcerer Singh in for.

Gunn picked up a leather-bound book and opened it, but all the pages were blank. He began to set it down…then he stopped. This book looked familiar.

"That's an old ledger, I guess," the shopkeeper commented. "Never been used, though. I can make you a good deal on it."

"Yeah?" Gunn replied casually. "What'cha askin' for it?"

The shopkeeper sized up both Gunn and the book. "I'd say twenty-five. It's in real nice shape."

Gunn appeared to think it over. Then he shrugged. "Sounds reasonable." He pulled a billfold from his pants pocket, drew out two ten-dollar bills and one five-dollar, and tossed them on the table. "Where'd it come from?"

"Not sure; I picked it up at an auction in San Diego. Got most of the rest of this stuff there, too. They said it was salvage from a warehouse that burned." The shopkeeper grinned. " 'Course, you can keep that under your hat, if you will. Sounds better when I put it out front to say that I went to Arabia 'n got it off a genie. Customers'll be more likely to accept my price tags that way."

"Hey, you gotta make a profit just like everybody else," Gunn agreed. He flipped through the pages of the other books for sale, and then looked at the rest of the items from the crate very carefully. When he was finished, he said, "Okay if we call you before you open up tomorrow? We've got a wizard buddy that might like to buy some of this."

"Fine, long as you call early."

They left the shop and got back inside their minivan, but Gunn didn't start the engine. Instead he wet his lips and held the book before him. Then he turned to the others. "Any of you know the name of some prophecy book? Doesn't matter which one."

They looked at him, puzzled. "Uh...Nostradamus?" Clem offered, scratching his head. "I'm not sure how the title goes, though."

"Revelations?" Spike suggested.

Gunn put the book close to his lips. "Book of Revelations," he said to it. "King James version."

He paused, and then slowly opened the leather book to the first page. Text began to fill the blank spaces, written in clear, neat font by an unseen hand.

"Shit," Gunn breathed. His face was ashen. "This is one of Wes's books."

* * *

A truce meeting of sorts was underway in Michael's parlor. Dilip Singh and Paul Yoder had unexpectedly hit it off, and decided that the two warring factions could benefit from mutual cooperation. Accordingly, Angel now sat across the coffee table from Giles and tried to hold in his glower.

He'd had no chance yet to talk to Willow. But she and Faith had apparently kept their promise to him to not tell anyone in Sunnydale, particularly Buffy, about the existence of Connor; he wondered if Wolfram & Hart's mindwipe had since erased their memory of the boy as it had everyone else's. He wondered if Buffy had found out about him. For some reason - Angel couldn't explain to himself why - he didn't want Buffy in Connor's world. Connor belonged to Angel's life with Darla and Cordy. Try as he might, his mind couldn't make Buffy fit there.

Xander fidgeted around the room, occasionally coaxed by Michael into telling some anecdote about the Scoobies' experiences pre- and post-crater. He was prompted along by Oz, who now had little cousin Jordy in tow. Jordy sat quietly in a chair and practiced morphing. The sight of the ten-year-old shifting in and out of werewolf face was rather disturbing to Giles, who tried to avoid looking at the child as he discussed various hellmouth locations with Dilip.

Suddenly the back door was opened with a bang, and Gunn came in through the kitchen, tailed by Clem and Paloma and Spike. "Angel," he gasped, "Look what we found."

He held the tome out to Angel. The vampire's eyes widened.

"Wesley's."

Angel turned to Michael and Dilip. "It's one of the template books that Wolfram & Hart gave to Wes to access their library. Gunn, where'd you get this?"

"A crappy little second-hand magic shop that he showed us."

Gunn pointed a thumb back at Clem. The wrinkled demon smiled and waved shyly. "Howdy, folks."

"It still works, too," Gunn added. "It's the prophecy volume. He used to read this thing like it was the damn newspaper." Sadness was mixed with the excitement in his voice. He sank down onto a chair and sighed.

Mr. Yoder's eyes fairly glittered. "May I look at it?" He put out a hand and gently touched the book's spine. "How does it work?"

"You just tell it what title you want, an' if it's in the WH library the template'll reproduce it on its pages."

"Good God." Yoder leaned forward and murmured to the book, "_Marie Picard's Foretellings._" He looked up at Angel and waited. Grudgingly, Angel opened it and showed him the first page. Yoder drew in a flabbergasted breath. He addressed the book again. _"The Devandiré Sibylline Codex."_

The text obediently changed.

_"Six Centuries of Omens Interpreted."_

More new text.

Now Giles was also on his feet.

"This...this is a miracle. Things our library had lost forever..." Yoder's voice shook with emotion. "Please...if we could just borrow this...just to record..."

"You can _have_ the damn thing as far as I'm concerned," Paloma snorted. "We don' pay no attention to prophecies. Some guy got stoned five hundred years ago and wrote down what he hallucinated, an' I'm supposed to let that rule my life? Tryin' to follow predestination ain't gonna do nothin' but get you into trouble."

"Hey, it's MY template. I paid good money for it," Gunn objected. At Yoder's panicked look he softened. "Aw, hell, you can use it if you want. It's still _our_ property, though. You don't get to bogart my book just 'cause someone's stolen your Lucky Charms."

Giles stared at the template book almost hungrily. "Did that shop have anything else of this caliber of importance?"

The four shoppers looked at each other and shrugged. "Not sure," Gunn said. "None of us are that familiar with magic supplies."

"I can take you back if you want," Clem offered. "Spike 'n me were gonna go hang out at my place and watch some TV, but we can give a lift to anyone else that wants to come along."

"Yeah, we'll go," Oz decided, nudging Jordy on the shoulder. "C'mon, Jord. Maybe they've got some trick handcuffs."

"We can pick up something to drink at the Seven Eleven," said Clem. "You like Slush Puppies, Mr. Giles?"

"Not particularly." Giles scowled with dismay. Spike, Oz, and Clem filed past him toward the door to the carport. Jordy scampered behind them, still in wolf face. Under his breath Giles muttered at Michael, "I had no idea that our 'meeting of the minds' was going to include cruising the dragstrip with Eddie, Wally, Lumpy, and The Beav."

"That's a lovely dress you're wearing, Mrs. Cleaver," Spike said sweetly, flashing Giles an ingratiating smile.

Giles did not smile in return.

* * *

_This is where he lives now._

It was late afternoon, and Buffy stared out through her windshield at the big concrete-coated, teepee-shaped motel rooms surrounding her car. She'd casually wormed the address from Thu Kheim, thankful that the girl was a natural-born blabbermouth anyway.

_That's the number. That room. Right there in front of me._ This was crazy, and she had no business being here. As if hypnotized, she got out of the car and walked to Spike's apartment door.

Knocked lightly.

Paused.

Pushed it open.

The apartment had the same basic layout as an average motel room: a long, low chest of dresser drawers across one wall; space for two double beds across the other; clothes closet and bathroom at the back. This place had been personalized, though. The television was set on a shelf hung high above the chest of drawers, to free up the space on the chest's surface, and one of the double beds was missing. In its place a tiny kitchenette had been set up, with a mini-refrigerator, a tiered cart holding an electric burner plate, microwave, and toaster oven, a ventless smoke hood, a small free-standing pantry, and a dormitory-sized table with two chairs. Pretty green and maroon Turkish area rugs decorated the floor. The drapes were drawn, but in the light from the ceiling and bedside lamps, the knotty pine-paneled walls glowed golden and brown and warm.

She crossed the room quietly, slowly. The bed wasn't made; its pillows and comforter were jumbled and piled into a messy, colorful heap. On the dresser there was a two-gallon fish aquarium. She knelt and peered into it; watched the ghostly, microscopic shrimp inside come and go, come and go. From the corner of her eye she spotted a wicker laundry basket beside the dresser. On impulse she reached out and lifted its lid. Dirty clothes were loaded in it, and on top of the mound a pair of men's black denim jeans lay intimately entwined with a pink, silky little panty.

The sight was like a slap to her face.

_I want it back. They can't... I want..._

This was the home he'd tried to offer _her_, in his crypt in Sunnydale - private and inviting, comfortable, glowing with candles. He'd spruced the crypt up for her, she knew; had hoped that it would make her happy and perhaps induce her to accept him; to stay.

To not be ashamed.

And she and Riley had trashed it.

She turned away from the basket as quickly as she could and crossed to the other side of the room. Fred's and Spike's possessions were mixed cozily together here, too: movies, books, cosmetics, foodstuffs. She flipped through their collection of musical CDs. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Patsy Cline. Billy Idol. Staind. Live. The Doors. The Dixie Chicks. Marilyn Manson. Lynyrd Skynyrd.

_Patsy Cline? Who the hell is THAT?_

"Buffy?"

She gasped, yanked her hands away from the disks, and wheeled around to see Fred standing in the doorway with a load of grocery bags in her arms.

"I'm sorry," Buffy spluttered. "I knocked, but the door was open - sort of - they said you guys lived here. I was looking for...for..." _Oh, crap,_ she moaned inwardly, _I've REALLY screwed up now._

"For Spike?" Fred slowly set the bags on the floor.

Buffy blanched and tried to think of a suitable reply.

"He's running some errands with the guys," Fred told her. "I'm not sure when he'll be back."

"Oh. That's okay. I can - I can just catch him some other time."

The two women stood in awkward, silent rivalry; simultaneously each raised a hand to tidy her hair.

_I look like something the cat dragged in,_ Buffy thought in disgust. _Dusty. Bloody. And waaaaaaay too much with the sweating. Note to self: don't come directly from slayer combat training to visit ex-boyfriends._ Fred didn't look quite the princess that she had last night either, though: her hair was plaited into two unflattering braids, and a pair of skinny black glasses balanced on the tip of her nose. She held one arm by her elbow and grinned widely and nervously._ Nope, not a fairy tale princess. More like a storybook character...Pippi Longstocking._

"I dropped Willow off at your motel room in Phoenix a little while ago," Fred was saying now. "Would you like something to drink? Or, uh, to sit down?"

"No, I'm good," Buffy assured her. She glanced around the room. "Nice place you've got here."

"Oh. Thanks. It's kind of small, but we like it all right. There's a swimming pool out back." Fred brightened and pointed in the direction of the bathroom. "We finally got the algae problem licked on it, so now we just have to make sure that the vacuum's running and keep an eye on the pH and chlorine levels..." She stopped and wrung her hands with a sheepish smile. "Sorry, I tend to go on and on and on sometimes."

Buffy smiled politely back. She nodded toward a bookshelf. "You must read a lot. Willow said you were a real science whiz." She leaned forward and squinted at some of the titles. "Poetry too, huh?"

"No, those are Spike's."

Buffy looked up at her. "_Spike_ reads_ poetry?_"

"Yeah, he always has. Yeats, Tennyson, Kerouac...some of it he's even got memorized. He can rattle off prose even faster than I can recite the periodic table of the elements. He likes to write it sometimes, too, but he doesn't think he's very good." She wrinkled her brow, puzzled at the slayer's surprise.

It dawned on Buffy that there was a lot she'd never learned about Spike's past. He'd bragged about some of the gory details: how Drusilla had turned him, how he'd revenged himself on his former friends with a railroad nail for some past insult...but nothing about the man he'd been before the vamping.

She looked at Fred again, genuinely mystified. "How do you _know_ all this?"

Fred studied her thoughtfully, and her answer was soft and brief.

"I listen."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

_Listen Listen Listen. _Fred had scribbled the word repeatedly across her bedroom in the Hyperion Hotel once, long, long ago; halting, wide-eyed, every so often in the midst of her frenzied wallpaper-destroying murals of calculus and sub-atomic particle theory to _listen freeze watch your back listen listen listen are the monsters coming? _

Now she watched and waited for Buffy's response.

"Guess so," Buffy said quietly. Her mouth pulled into a rueful semblance of a smile. "I never quite mastered that skill, myself. I kinda left my listening ears in preschool. Just call me Princess Earmuff." She stood in silence for another moment, and then said quickly, "I'd better go." Without looking at Fred, she slipped through the doorway, pulling the door shut behind her.

Outside, she discovered that a large gray tabby-striped cat with yellow eyes had made itself comfortable on her car's engine hood. It regarded Buffy calmly, and didn't budge as she got into the driver's seat. She rolled down the window and leaned out toward it. "Shoo, Kitty," she ordered.

The cat continued to stare at her. It was as still and unreadable as a sphinx, or that creepy Cheshire thing in _Alice in Wonderland_. She almost believed it would begin fading away until only a hideous grin was left. Not until she cranked the ignition did it finally rise and stretch and yawn, flexing each toe with studied, slow precision, and drop to the ground to saunter leisurely away. In Buffy's imagination she felt Fred's eyes, as well as the cat's, still on her as she accelerated her car out of the motor court.

Details of the little apartment bounced around in her head as she drove. A card and a vase of blood-red roses on the dinette table. _(Did he give them to her? Does the card say "I love you"?) _Snapshots tucked into the edge of the mirror; the one of Angel had had a curly moustache added in ballpoint pen. A glimpse of the swimming pool behind the teepees._(Why'd she point to the bathroo- oh, guess you can see it from her bathroom window. Do they swim there at night, underneath the stars?)_

She didn't look back, and so she didn't see Fred peeking out at her from behind the draperies.

Didn't see Fred's eyes flicker pale blue and then back to brown again.

* * *

At Mr. Wight's house - Now With New & Improved Front Door - she found Yoder apparently having a conversation with an old leather book. In an adjacent room, Thu Kheim was showing a dictionary page to Xander: "See? 'Scythe: a farming implement having a long, thin, curving blade attached at an angle to a long, two-handled shaft, used for mowing or reaping plants by swinging the blade over the ground with a sweeping motion.'"

"Well, yeah, okay, _technically_ it's not a scythe," Xander muttered.

Angel was in an upstairs bedroom. He was working awkwardly at a laptop computer, his thick fingertips on the keys slow and clumsy. Here was her white knight; her soul-mate; the love of her life around whom a thousand sweet dreams circled. Buffy came to stand beside him.

"Never thought I'd see you go high tech," she commented. When he didn't answer, she added, "But then I never thought I'd see you make a deal with the devil, either."

Angel's face tightened. "Buffy, I know it's hard to understand, but I had some good reasons for joining Wolfram & Hart."

"Name one."

"I did it for Cordelia."

Buffy looked as though he'd spoken in Greek. "Okay, I'll bite. Knock, knock, who's there; Ididitforcordelia who?"

"She was sick," he told her. "She'd gotten possessed by a demon, and it left her comatose. They promised to take care of her, to keep her alive...to find a cure."

"Why didn't you come to _us?_ Willow might have been able to bring her out of it, or Giles, or, or..." She flailed her hands in frustration.

"I didn't want to lose her."

His voice had become strained - choked, almost - with emotion, with raw, heartbroken pain.

_Heartbroken?_ Buffy felt the blood drain from her face as a creeping suspicion hit her.

"Please don't tell me..." The words cracked from her lips like hard little rocks. "_Please._Don't. Tell. Me - that you were in LOVE with her?"

For an instant he felt her in his arms again, warm and alive and beaming at him. His Cordy. Suddenly he was tired of denial.

"Yes. I loved her."

He raised his eyes to see Buffy staring at him, dumbfounded.

"But you brought me the amulet," she whispered. "You kissed me. You said you'd be willing to wait for me. You were...damn it, you were _smiling!"_

"I was running away. Everything in my life was falling apart - my work, my family - and when I came back to Sunnydale I felt like I'd escaped. You were there, laughing and taking down a demon, and it was so much like old times again...so for awhile I pretended that it _was_ old times. And I shouldn't have. It wasn't fair to you, and it wasn't fair to Cordelia." He bit his lip, not wanting to admit the final few words. "And it wasn't fair to Spike."

Buffy was almost at a loss for words. "So you're saying...what? That you don't love me anymore?"

"No, I'll never say that. I'm saying that we've got separate lives now, and that maybe we don't know each other as well as we once thought we did."

_I'm not hearing this. I am NOT hearing this. Please let it just be a dream from some other slayer. _She felt torn between bursting into tears and smashing the laptop against the wall. In the end she did neither, but instead pulled up the cold, dead mask that had become her heart's armor.

"Are there any more cats you'd like to let out of the bag, as long as we're on a cat-release roll?" she asked flatly. "Any cats that you've fallen in love with and asked to marry you and give birth to your kittens?" Angel hesitated, and Buffy caught it. "Shit. There _is_ a cat."

"A dog, actually." Buffy's unexpected sarcasm had begun to rankle him. "A werewolf. We've been helping her learn to control her wolf phases. She and I...I don't know yet if what we've got will be permanent, but we like each other."

_He's replacing me. He's really, actually doing it. _She was about to scream "HOW COULD YOU?" - but then she remembered her own immortal cat in Italy. Reluctantly, she bit back the angry cry. Mask on again. "Well, like is nice, so...go, you."

"Thanks." He gave her a little smile that was tinged with equal parts relief and sadness...but how much of the sadness was for her and how much was for Cordy, she couldn't rightly tell.

* * *

Downstairs, the shoppers returned with some satisfactory purchases, although nothing to rival Wesley's book.

"Where's it been all this time?" Gunn wondered. In the years since their escape, they'd been haunted by the thought that Wes might possibly be a prisoner of Wolfram & Hart - that his soul, like Lilah's, may have been entrapped by his employment contract, and that now he was bound to the company for all eternity. While Yoder called forth and photographed page after page, Michael had held a corner of the book and tried to locate the ex-watcher's spirit, but his limited psychic vision turned up nothing.

Thu Kheim screwed up her nose. "And what's that smell?"

One by one they all became aware of it then: a foul, increasingly powerful odor of unwashed body. The scent of weeks-old multiple layers of dried sweat, spunk, and skid-marked underwear wafted up from the prophecy book.

Xander said through clamped nostrils, "I thought it was Spike, but I wasn't going to say anything."

"Buggar you, Harris."

"For a change, it's not Jordy's sneakers," Oz observed. His young cousin nodded in solemn agreement.

"Maybe it's this guy?" Clem shrugged helpfully and pointed at a mist that was coalescing beside the book and Mr. Yoder. Yoder lurched backward in alarm, then swung his video camera up and began filming the apparition.

Within seconds the mist took the shape of a man...a grubby, whiskery, middle-aged man with a glum face and a protruding beer belly thinly covered by a grimy old T-shirt. The bottom of the shirt was tucked into an equally filthy pair of chino pants. The man's stocky gray-haired arms hung listlessly at his sides.

Paloma took a cautious step toward the vapor man, then reached out and passed her hand sideways through his body. "It's just a ghost," she decided. "A fantasma. He prob'ly don't even know we're here." She sniffed the air near the spectral visitor, then bent and sniffed the leather-bound template. "I think he's attached to the book."

Gunn grimaced. "Attached as in 'real fond of' or attached as in 'my ass is Krazy-Glue'd to it'?"

"The latter, I'm afraid," Giles replied. "And until you can exorcise this...gentleman, I recommend a thick application of mentholated ointment under everyone's nose."

Xander went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Windex and a can of floral-scented air freshener. He sprayed the ghost with a generous amount of each, but the stench remained as strong as ever.

"Poor old guy," Thu sighed. "We should at least give him a name. I'm going to call him Old Bob."

"I'm going to call it a night," Paloma yawned. "You muchachos can sit up and analyze Casper the Stinky Ghost. I'm going home to bed."

Yoder looked up from the video camera and spoke to Giles dryly. "I wonder what the younger Mr. Pryce would make of this."

* * *

They were unable to see, any of them, the ghostly hobo's history: how immediately after the fall of the L.A. Wolfram & Hart branch, a few enterprising demons had broken into the evacuated building and pilfered various objects; how two of the demons had come to blows over an armful of mystical books and how in the scuffle some of the books had fallen out a shattered window; how the dull-witted vagrant now known as "Bob" had found one of the books where it had landed in the street, and had staggered off with it to a pawn shop; how he and the pawnbroker had argued over the price for the book and how Old Bob had had a heart attack in the heat of the battle and dropped dead beside the Knives & Jewelry counter. After the authorities had hauled the body away, the pawnbroker gave the book to his nephew in San Diego who was heavily into Goth, and the nephew had decorated his bedroom with it and several other occult bits and pieces until his mother had demanded that he Get Rid Of This Shit, whereupon the book and the rest of his Addams Family decor were put into a rental storage building and then sold at auction when he moved to Pasadena and failed to pay the monthly fee. The purchaser stashed the collection in a warehouse until the warehouse caught fire (he'd noticed an unpleasant odor around the items at times and later wondered if the fumes from them had ignited), and the surviving contents of the warehouse, including the book and its sluggish ghost, were sold at auction again, to the tattooed magic-shopkeeper from Phoenix.

Yoder tied a handkerchief over his nose and kept on filming.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The evening ticked on. Giles and Yoder continued to record the prophecy book and tried to ignore its smelly addendum. Xander made a sandwich. Thu Kheim grew bored and began entertaining herself by balancing Buffy's troll hammer upright with the end of its handle on the flat of her hand. Clem and Spike drifted over to the television and reminisced quietly about old times.

"This one's interesting," Michael commented, examining a withered yellow object from the purchases that Oz had unpacked on the coffee table.

"It's a goblin scrotum," said Gunn. "Used to boost invisibility spells. They're collected from the corpses before burial and preserved in fungus."

"I see," Michael nodded, setting the object down and wiping his hand on his pants.

Gunn chuckled. "That's the kind of trivia that stays with you when all the legal eagle info has faded away."

Little Jordy was seated on the rug with his chin and crossed arms resting on the coffee table's edge, his face back in its human form. He gazed at the new magical supplies with his customary silence. "Danny."

"Yeah, Jord?" Oz said absently.

"Can Willow use this stuff to find that Wesley guy?"

Heads raised; the adults looked at Jordy and at each other. Willow _was_ a much more powerful mage than either Dilip or Giles. Her control was iffy, true, but over the years she had successfully tapped into sources of magic that most witches could only dream of.

"Maybe she could," Oz answered.

Jordy stared ahead thoughtfully. "Maybe she could make Illyria her own body, too, so she wouldn't have to keep borrowing Fred's."

"Hey, yeah, why not?" Gunn exclaimed. "She's got the mojo. Hell, she re-souled Angel twice and slayerized half the fuckin' planet...Dude, if anyone can give us a hand, it's her."

Giles rose up, alarmed. "Wait, now. It'd be best to think this through before asking Willow to perform any spells on your behalf. Wolfram & Hart is still a powerful and very evil organization; we can't just go charging into their territory at half-cock, even to find a former colleague. It could be suicidal - and believe me when I say that we'd like nothing more than to know Wesley's true fate, for his family's sake as well as our own. His mother is heartbroken." He shook his head, and then his voice audibly stiffened. "As for dealing directly with your 'Illyria' creature - that's entirely up to Willow."

"Aw, no, we wouldn't want you to get your fingers dirty helpin' us out," Gunn growled, his voice dripping sarcasm.

"It isn't that," Mr. Yoder said. "It's just that it makes sense to try to secure an area befo- "

He was interrupted by a _WHUMP_ as Thu accidentally dropped the troll hammer and its massive weight broke three floorboards. She cringed sheepishly. "Oops."

Several pairs of Council and Sunnydale eyes went to the damaged floor, and then automatically went to Xander. "I know the drill," Xander sighed. "Where's your toolbox?"

* * *

Buffy slipped from the house unnoticed, not much caring what was going on downstairs, and drove back to the motel room she shared with Willow. The room was dimly lit: the TV off and only the bathroom light burning. She found her friend sitting crosslegged in bed in her pajamas, eyes closed, covered from head to foot in a cloud of twinkling, dancing, glowing particles. "Are you beaming up or down?" Buffy asked her.

Willow cracked open one eye and smiled. "Just jogging in place." The particles swirled and settled and rose again. "I got the grand tour of the area today. It's not such a bad little hellmouth at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love."

"You're not quoting freely from _A Charlie Brown Christmas _again, are you?"

"It's still my secret vice," the witch murmured. Her body levitated a few inches above the covers. "They seem to have this hellmouth under control pretty well; no apocalypti or legions of demonic armies or fluffy yellow baby chicks with agenda and poison fangs..." She caught sight of her glittery reflection in the TV screen. "Hey, check it out. I'm a snow globe."

Buffy slumped down on her own bed, disconsolate. "Okay, I know my track record sucked before, but two dumpages within a twenty-four hour period is a new low."

Willow gave her an odd look. "Is there a reason that I need to know how many times you've pottied?"

"I'm talking about guys, Wil," Buffy sighed. "Guys who've made it clear that I'm no longer wanted in their undead, new-girlfriend-having lives. I've been thrown over for Lassie and Alberta Einstein. All that's missing now is for Riley Finn to parachute onto the roof to tell me again how fabulous Sam is."

The shiny particle cloud vanished. "Angel broke it off with you? Oh, no! Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him?"

"There wasn't much part of 'I loved Cordelia and now that she's dead I'm smoochin' a werewolf' to misunderstand."

Willow did a double-take. "_Oz_ and Angel...?"

"No! Oz and- I mean Angel and- " Buffy's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "He found someone else."

Willow picked at the bedcovers for a minute before she spoke. "Well...not to split hairs or anything, but so did you. Morty's waiting for you back in Rome, remember?"

"I wish you wouldn't call him that."

"Sorry. But I have trouble pronouncing Chef Boy-Ar-Dee's name correctly, let alone Don Julio Pizzaria What's-His-Face, and 'The Immortal' just sounds like something out of a comic book. ...Hey, whoa, _Cordelia_ and Angel?"

"Who'd a' thunk, huh?" The concept was still impossible to process. God rest her soul, but...conceited, shallow, self-centered Cordelia? Cordelia who'd worn her Snotty Bitch title proudly? Cordelia the Queen of Mean? But he'd gotten all chummy with Faith, too, when Faith was horrible, Buffy remembered. Had Cordelia acted differently around him, or was there a side of Angel that was attracted to mean girls?

"He's changed, Willow. He was always quiet, but he was never..._distant_ before. It was like his mind was a million miles away. Like he didn't care whether I approved of what he'd been doing or not. Oh, my god. He took up for _Spike."_

That, as much as anything else, wounded her ego. It also frightened her. The rivalry between Angel and Spike for her hand had been a constant for lo these many years; a thing that, in a sick sort of way, she had come to count on and be reassured by. As long as they fought, she knew she was wanted. That she was the center of their universe. That they would do whatever she asked. In a life where people were so fleeting and burdens so great, that kind of power was both heady and comforting. _I've given so much. I've given UP so much. Don't I deserve it?_

Couldn't count on anything now. In her absence all the relationships had shifted; all the players had changed sides.

No more dancing.

* * *

"I'll get with Willow first thing in the morning," Oz promised Gunn. "I think she'd be willing." To Giles he added, "We'll be careful."

"Please do," Giles said. He was forced to raise his voice somewhat over the hammer and woodsaw sounds of Xander patching the floor. "I can't guarantee you the full support of the council. We're here primarily to check on Miss Kheim, after all. Any additional casework will require clearance..."

"Bla bla bla bla bla," Thu Kheim mumbled under her breath.

A quick swear escaped Xander as his impaired depth perception caused him to misjudge his target and almost hammer his hand. Spike rolled his eyes. "No fear now that Bob The Builder's on the team."

Xander took some nails out of his mouth. "Hey, better that than Bob The Spirit Of Unwiped Bottoms Yet To Come." He grimaced in the direction of Old Bob. "Seriously, that guy puts the B.O. in 'Boo.' "

"Ro rhit, Rhaggy, to paraphrase one of American telly's higher intellectual children's programs," Spike snorted.

Xander jabbed a finger at him. "Okay, I'll give you that our cartoons are weird, but at least..." He pondered in desperation. "...At least our towns don't have goofy names like, like...'Doodleshire' and 'Strumpet-Upon-Twit.' "

Spike turned to Giles. "We have a town named after Faith and Monkey Boy?"

Giles said, "Shut up, both of you."

Yoder set the video camera down, rubbed a crick out of his neck, and murmured to the watcher, "We've still got Ms. Burkle to interview. Now that Spike's told us where the rest of the Old Ones are buried - I couldn't get much out of Angel about that, by the way - we can send a team out to seal it off. The well-keeper's cave might have some records about Illyria's species, too. Be worth having it searched."

Giles nodded agreement. "Far safer to do this in our own way," he said, his voice low and confidential. Angel's way, after all, was what had gotten Illyria released and Ms. Burkle killed in the first place. Too blind, too rash, too overly-confident. He didn't like the idea of Willow heading off in that direction.

"Don't throw candy corn through the ghost, Jordy," he heard Oz saying. "That's rude."

No, he didn't like the idea of Willow joining forces with Angel at all.

* * *

Login...password...

The Inbox page appeared, and Angel gazed down at the bright laptop screen and its list of e-mail letters. Past the Discount Viagra offer; past the invitation from the Nigerian princess to keep her twelve million sixty dollars safe in his bank account; down, down...

neenah at hotmail dot com.

He sat still and silent for a time, then slowly moved the cursor onto the letter and clicked it open..

_Hi, Big Guy. Miss you. Love you. _

_See you soon._

Slowly, painstakingly, he began to type a reply.

* * *

Home again, Spike pressed his front door shut, and moved quietly across the bedroom. In the dark and the silence he shrugged out of his clothes. Cool air tingled the newly-bared skin and he paused a moment, motionless, to revel in the sensation.

When it passed, he lay down on the bed and slid underneath the blankets. He found Fred asleep there, curled on her side into a fetal ball, her small hands fisted and pressed against her face. Carefully, trying not to wake her, he spooned his body around hers and draped an arm over her protectively. The hand that could crush bricks with no effort gently covered her tense fists, easing them open, lacing his fingers between hers, soothing and stroking until finally her hands relaxed in his.

"I'll never hurt you, Pet," he whispered against her cheek as she slept. "I promise."

* * *

_Tonight's dream was different from the previous ones: erratic, fragmented; lurching from scene to scene in an uncertain timeline. At one point she found her mother lying dead on the couch, and that was truly a nightmare even though it didn't look like Mama; Mom had straight black hair and was Cambodian, and now she was tall and white and curly sandy-blonde. And dead._

_And a severed hand was crawling across a table, and Anya insisted on selling it, and bit by bit she felt a rage begin to grow within her that twisted her soul into ugly, shrieking knots..._

Buffy got out of bed and groped her way to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Several miles away, Thu Kheim got out of bed and turned on a lamp and wrote the dream down.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Fred sprinkled a pinch of food into the aquarium water and watched her little brine shrimp paddle to the surface to eat their breakfast. A soft column of tiny, whispery bubbles rose from the filter pump's aeration stone in a lilliputian current, making the water sparkle and dance and spreading the food particles out in a silent swirling do-si-do. Not taking her eyes from the tank, as if she were speaking to the shrimp rather than to Spike, she said, "Buffy came by here yesterday looking for you."

The rummaging in the refrigerator ceased, and Fred saw him in her mind's eye turning to stone as he deliberated how to reply. In the big mirror over the dresser she watched the frig door remain open, then slowly close by itself. A fork and a can of kippered herring floated off the pantry shelves and through the air, their reflection in the glass marking Spike's invisible walk to the kitchen table.

"Did she?" he said finally. "What'd she want?"

"Didn't say; just that she'd catch up with you later. She took off in kind of a hurry." Tiring of the Guess-Where-In-The-Room-Spike-Is game, Fred turned away from the mirror and sat down at the table herself, facing him, to finish her bowl of cereal.

"Nothing new there," Spike mumbled. He paused a moment, obviously working up to something. "Oz is gonna ask Willow if she'll help us get a heads-up on Wolfram & Hart. What kind of power they've got now; who's in charge…make sure no one's there who doesn't want to be."

Fred lowered her spoon and looked at him. "Wesley?"

He nodded. "Wesley; Lorne; anybody else who might have been daft enough to sign a contract."

"But if they don't have a – a 'shell' to come back to…" she said in a bleak voice. The sound tore at Spike's heart: pity for her; pity for the watcher. Unwillingly he imagined Pryce's body still lying where he'd fallen, decomposed now beyond recognition. Or had the Senior Partners torn it apart in a retaliatory fury?

"If we can't bring 'em back solid, we can at least try to free their souls, I s'pose," he said. "Send 'em on to a better place."

He considered telling her about Part Two of the plan – making the Old One a brand new body - but decided to hold off. Illyria could be listening, and might take the offer the wrong way and try to slaughter everyone involved, so he'd made Willow and the others vow to keep their gobs shut about it. Harris had groused some, but the wolf cub had spit into his grubby little palm and held it out to Spike for a manly, binding handshake. He'd then crooked his finger and pledged, "Pinky swear," which Spike had thought a bit girlish until Jordy explained that the person who broke such a promise must chop their pinky finger off.

* * *

"Is everyone here who needs to be?" Willow stood on the hearth in Michael's parlor, a clipboard in her hand and a gleam of excitement in her eye. "Good. Okay. I've volunteered to reconnoiter whatever's left of the L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart. Thing is, I don't know squat about the place. I could use a couple of tour guides, and a little villain-kicking muscle wouldn't hurt, either. So anybody that wants to come with, write your names on the sign-up sheet. Your personal signatures will make it easier to pull you into my teleportation field. Plus, I don't know how some of you spell your names."

Xander raised his hand. "I'd like to sign up for the committee to make sack lunches for your trip. And I emphasize 'YOUR' trip."

"Pussy," Spike murmured.

"Damn right, and proud of it in this case. I think you're all _nuts._ There aren't enough of us here to take on Evil Incorporated, even if we_ do_ put on leafy helmets and combat-belly-crawl through their back door."

"I was thinking more of an Erin Esurance look, myself," Buffy said.

"Can I be Jonny Quest?" Thu Kheim asked. "But not Kim Possible. Her naked mole rat grosses me out."

Giles stood up and shook his head grimly. "Buffy, Willow, I _must_ ask you to reconsider! At least agree to wait until I send for more slayers to help you. There are seven stationed in Los Angeles now - and they've reported no activity from the Wolfram & Hart organization in months. The company no longer even owns the building."

"Which means it's probably totally safe," Buffy countered.

"No, it means that we can't be sure of anything."

"Giles is right," Xander said, "There could be anything in that building. For all we know, The First Evil could have bought it. He could have rigged the whole thing with explosives. He could – he could disguise himself as one of you while you're in there and fool you into God knows what. Who here's been dead before? Show of hands."

Angel, Buffy, Spike, Gunn, Fred, and Old Bob raised their hands slowly.

"Oh, come on, you guys!" Willow exclaimed, "Don't weenie out on me!" She shot a defiant glare at Giles. "We're the Slayerettes! Sunnydale's Finest! Remember our motto?"

There was blank silence. Finally Oz guessed, " 'When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout'?"

"Not that one. The other one."

" 'Sod off'?" Thu suggested. Spike patted her on the head approvingly.

The clipboard had made the circuit around the room and come back to Willow. She ticked off the names with satisfaction: "Angel, Oz, Buffy, Charles, Paloma – like the perfume, right? – Thu, Spike, Fred…" She looked up at Winifred. "You sure? Fisticuff-wise, it could get kinda hairy."

Fred shrugged. "Been hairy before. And you might need a lab partner."

Willow grinned. She was feeling jazzed now. She turned to Kay. "How about you? I hear you levitate a mean toothpick."

Kay smiled and shook her head. "Mine's not magic, though, Girlfriend. Just plain ol' telekinesis. I'll just stay here and guard Fort Asscrack."

"Good enough. Guess we shouldn't be too big a crowd, anyway. It kinda counteracts the whole 'sneaking in inconspicuously' thing." Willow added her own signature to the bottom of the list and tore the paper from the clipboard. "Get together any weapons you think you'll need. I'll prepare the teleportation circle."

The group broke up as each went to gather supplies. Giles stepped over to Michael, who had begun pushing the rugs and furniture from the middle of the room. "Wight," he hissed, "You can't allow this. Willow's only doing this out of anger, and…well, I'm not sure why Buffy's doing it. But you've got to order them to stop. They could all get themselves killed."

Michael set down the floor lamp he was carrying and looked quietly at the distraught watcher. "If I don't let them do it here, they'll just go do it outside. And isn't this what we're in the business for? Rooting out evil creatures? I know my bunch isn't very powerful, but we're game. How's that saying go…'The greatest evil is when good men stand by and do nothing'?"

Giles made no reply. He was tired and frustrated and at a loss for words. Michael picked the lamp up again. "There's bourbon in the cupboard over the kitchen sink," he said, not unsympathetically. "In case you're feeling like this is one of those days when Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, and Johnnie Walker are your only friends."

Willow's circle took up most of the space in the room. Poured from jars of powders and liquids only she knew the names of, it made a glorious, sticky mess on the floor. "Don't worry," she assured Michael, "It'll disappear when we do." Her band of volunteers took their positions inside the ring, where she'd appointed them. She laid the list of names on a plate, held the plate above her head, closed her eyes, and began to chant softly. Giles watched them from the dining room table, where he sat in defeat with a bottle and a shot glass in his hands. He thought of asking Yoder to try to reason with them, but Yoder was still absorbed in copying the bloody book. The people in the circle waited, standing perfectly still.

Then in the blink of an eye, they were gone.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

There was no sense of flying, or of things rushing past. No dizziness; no sensation of either losing or regaining consciousness. No sense of lost time. One moment they were in Michael's living room, and the next moment they were standing in the lobby of the Hotel Hyperion.

It was just as they'd left it, from what they could see by the dim sunlight that filtered through the frosted glass front doors: a handsome old monarch of the Jazz Age, ready to be born again, and when Willow whispered "Utilities," the electric wall sconces lit up like so many birthday candles. The room was suddenly filled with the gleam of marble and bronze, art deco curves and rich wallpaper, grandeur stretching high and wide around them and marred only by a mist-thin layer of dust. For a moment they all simply stood and looked, and even those who'd called it home felt overwhelmed.

"Whoa." Thu Khiem drew a reverent breath. "This place is _awesome!_" She broke rank and scampered up the staircase, calling over her shoulder, "Are we going to camp out here? Can I pick a room?"

Angel turned to Willow. "We were supposed to land in the tunnels below the building."

"Sorry, I got the latitude a little off-course. But hey, better than going too far sideways and popping into the middle of the street, right? What with the daylight and speeding buses and…anyway, I'm pretty certain no one else has been in here lately."

"So these were your digs once upon a time," Spike said, flopping onto the round, velvet-upholstered lobby bench. "Not bad, in an expensive bordello ambience sort of way. Well, I suppose every hotel needs a theme."

They fanned out uncertainly. Gunn had already stepped away from the group and was standing in front of the check-out desk, gazing at its surface. At an inquiry from Angel, he looked up and said wistfully, "I thought maybe Lorne had left a note."

For a few moments they were all silent again, and there was no sound but the clump of Thu Khiem's feet exploring the floor above them.

Finally Fred drew in a gusty sigh. "I'll check the kitchen and see if everything's still workin'. We can order some take-out and get settled before we go see the - the other place."

"Not by yourself," Spike said quickly, and rose to go with her. Buffy winced and looked away.

She'd been staring at Spike ever since he'd made himself at home on the old sofa; hadn't even realized it until now, her memories hammering and her eyes soaking him in. Legs stretched out languidly; elbows parked up on the sofa's back; no trace of either the smoldering "come hither" expressions or the sad yearning ones that he'd once aimed her way for three years running.

He was teasing, that was all, sitting there looking so cool; he just wanted to see how she'd react. He wouldn't stay upset with her. He never did. Once she got him alone and they'd talked things out, he'd drop the distance act and everything would go back to the way it was before. To normal. To-

Willow touched her gently on the arm. "We can call Xander, too; let him know we got here okay."

"Xander. Right." Buffy fished her cell phone from her pocket, looked at it absently as though she didn't recognize its function, and put it back. She looked over in the direction that Fred and Spike had gone. "Does she always need an escort? I thought when danger threatened she was able to turn into a colorful version of me."

"Not unless Illyria's in earshot," Willow explained. "And Fred says Illy's a frequent-flyer kinda gal. She mostly just comes home to roost when the inter-dimensional walls become too thick to morph through comfortably or when a Io phase makes her feel like her molecules are expanding and the astral plane may collapse. Boy, I can identify with that."

Thu reappeared and leaned over the second-floor railing. "12B's out of commission," she called down. "Its bathtub shower is all bashed in. And one of the suites looks like a Women's Wear Daily exploded in it." She held up a brassiere and an over-sized pair of men's pants.

"If walls could talk," Oz murmured.

* * *

After weighing their options, it was decided that Fred would remain behind in the Hyperion, along with Thu and Gunn and Oz. The rest - Willow, Angel, Buffy, Paloma, Spike – entered the tunnels from the Hyperion's basement and followed them block by block (guided by Angel's directions and the bright yellow glow of light given off by Willow's hands) below the streets, then up through a loosely-bolted grating into the underground parking garage of what was once the Los Angeles Wolfram & Hart building.

Like the hotel, it was in surprisingly good shape – excellent, in fact. Cars were neatly parked; the ground and walls were spotless; even the lighting fixtures were free of decaying bugs.

"Not a crack anywhere," Spike marveled. "Thought you said it got shook all to hell."

"It did." Angel said grimly. He stepped up to an elevator door and ran his finger down the wall-mounted list of floors and departments. Accounting; Fragrances; Bath Products; Hair Care…

"The rumor was right." Paloma's eyes widened to grey saucers. "Avon _did_ take the place over! Fuck, I'm impressed."

Willow opened her fist, revealing a small puddle of gelatin. "I'm not so sure it's Avon calling. I'd better apply the Hide In Plain Sight glamour before we go any further." She wiped on the forehead of each of them a little smear of the unguent, designed to make them invisible to all but each other. She grinned as she applied the stuff to the vampires. "Like you guys need more gel on your heads." To her surprise, Spike smiled back – a bit uneasily, true, but a smile nonetheless. She anointed herself with the last of the goop, and they entered the elevator.

They were assaulted first by the music of Doris Day's "Que Sera Sera," which launched its attack from the speaker in the ceiling, and then by the cloying odor of talcum powder. "Oh, God," Buffy wheezed. "Cashmere Bouquet. Pardon me while I cough up a lung." Standing so close to both Spike and Angel simultaneously was doing a number on her pulse, as well; it was racing, and confined with them in this cramped space she wanted nothing so much as to turn and grab and press her face against cool, pale skin…instead she pulled her shirt collar up over her nose and added a muffled "What floor should we start with?"

"Let's go to the basement and work our way up," Paloma suggested.

"Let's not and just say we did," muttered Spike, grimacing.

"Eeny-Meeny-Chili-Beany," Willow chanted, pointing to each floor button in turn. "How about the thirteenth? That's probably where all the evil weevils hang out."

Angel shook his head. "Willow, are you sure that incantation's reliable?"

"It's not an incantation. It's Rocky & Bullwinkle."

Angel looked baffled. "It's who?"

"Lucky Numero Siete," Paloma decided suddenly, and before anyone could stop her, she punched the seventh-floor button. "There." She crossed her arms and looked pleased. "Hey, didn' you guys tell me once that this place had a department that kept goats?"

* * *

The elevator car rose, humming softly, and then with another soft hum the door opened.

The little group looked out into a corridor that could have been a page from a Mary Engelbreit magazine. Everywhere were ruffles and pastels. China candy dishes. Rose bouquets in pretty vases. Dainty white and gilt furniture; plush white carpet underfoot. Ceiling light fixtures with silk shades and flowery, glittering chandeliers. On the walls, happy paintings and cute plaques and shelved figurines that fairly oozed adorableness.

"Holy Hummel," Willow murmured.

Here and there, nattily-dressed men and women bustled to and fro, all smiling pleasantly as they went about their work. Angel and his team walked among them apparently unnoticed. Down the corridor…across a lobby…up an ornate flight of stairs…

"May I help you?"

A slender, immaculately-dressed young man met them at the head of the stairs and blocked their path. Cocking his head, he smiled at them; a knowing, somewhat unnerving smile. He bore the look of a patient minister about to deal with some rambunctious students in his Sunday school class.

The group stood mute and frozen, silently trying to decide their best course of action. "I thought we were invisible," Buffy muttered at Willow through clenched teeth.

"You are," the young man said, still smiling. "But I can smell you." He made a hostess-like gesture toward some restroom doors. "Have you tried our fine line of antiperspirants?"

The stairway below them was now filled with at least three dozen men and women, all standing quietly and wearing that same inexplicable smile. Buffy raised The Ax Formerly Known As Scythe to chest level in preparation to swing, and was startled when Angel uttered a sharp "No." She stared at him. "Come again?"

"Not yet."

"Angel-"

"_Not yet."_

She turned to the other vampire. "Spike." It was not a question; it was an order. Cover her back.

Spike was silent for several seconds. Finally he answered, shrugging almost too casually. "The man says wait."

Buffy stared at Spike, dumbfounded. She stared again at Angel. She turned to Willow and the chupacabra woman and stared at them.

Willow squirmed uncertainly and whispered, "They haven't actually threatened us yet."

Now Angel took command once more. He addressed the strange gentleman. "We'd like to speak to whoever's the head of this company."

"Why, certainly! Lady Louise is just a lovely, lovely person. Who _wouldn't_ want to speak to her?" He made another fluttering motion with his hand. "Please, follow me."

Down more hallways, and another ride in an elevator. The décor was so very different from that of Wolfram & Hart that it took several seconds for Angel to realize that they were at the door of his old office. The slender gentleman tapped on it lightly and let them inside.

Angel's office appeared to have been turned into a combination lady's boudoir and Hallmark gift shop…and at its FrenchRococo desk, in the spot where Angel had once held court, sat a tall, large, middle-aged woman in a lavender chiffon pantsuit. Nary a wrinkle marred her face in spite of her age. Her lips and cheeks were neatly rouged. Her hair was frosted bone white in an up-swept, backcombed, lacquered 'do, and it puffed and swirled around her head like a cloud of spun-sugar cotton candy. She rose from her seat, beaming radiantly, and extended a plump hand.

"Well, hello, y'all! Welcome to Lady Louise Incorporated! I'm Louise Albright. But you can call me Lady Louise." She looked around the room and cocked her head as her staffer had done. "Now where are y'all?"

Willow sighed and gave up. "Be seen." With a clap of her hands, the invisibility spell was removed. Lady Louise's smile doubled in brilliance.

"If y'all aren't the handsomest bunch! Now you just sit right down and tell me what I can do for you." She gave Willow's hand a squeeze and swept back to her desk, the chiffon fabric billowing around her, and leaned back in her chair with a look of expectancy.

"We…" Angel wasn't quite sure how to begin. "Some…some of us used to work here." He shifted to the edge of his chair and clinched his hands together tightly. "We haven't been back since the previous owners vacated, and we just wondered…we left in kind of a hurry. I guess you could say there may be some loose ends that we need to tie up."

Louise studied him for a long moment. "You're Angel, aren't you?" Her laughter flowed through the air like warm, mellow syrup. "Darlin', Lady Louise knows all sorts of things. That's how she built this business."

"Right," Angel replied. "And just what _is _this business, exactly?"

"Beauty products. Products to enhance your life. Home décor, home help, home health. We build appliances that virtually run themselves, and a robot brand that's second to none."

"Robots?" Spike mused. "Don't suppose you ever made any ninja warrior models, did you?"

"Why, as a matter of fact, yes!" Louise said happily. "An anonymous client placed an order for several of those a few years ago. And that little hellmouth town south of here, the one that sank; we even got some orders from there for parts a time or two. We're very proud of our robot line. We call it 'Nearly Stepford.'"

"We need to look in your attic," Willow blurted out. She reddened as her companions glared at her in alarm. "Or – or your closets. Or…wherever there might be some of, you know, Wolfram & Hart's stuff left behind." She glanced at the others defiantly. "Well, we do."

Their hostess raised her eyebrows. Then she nodded and flashed her million-watt smile. "Lady Louise likes people who cut right to the chase. What is it you're lookin' for, Baby Doll?"

With a little choke in her voice, Willow answered.

"A missing friend."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

In a heartbeat, Lady Louise was out of her chair, around the desk, and enveloping Willow in a vast motherly hug. "Oh, you poor sweet angel!" she exclaimed, clutching her tightly. "You poor little lamb! You just have yourself a good ol' cry and then wipe those tears; everything'll be okay!"

"Oof," Willow grunted. Her face was smothered in Louise's bosoms.

Angel and Buffy stirred restlessly in their seats. Louise waved a hand at them reassuringly and silently mouthed, "She's gonna be fine." She gave Willow one final squeeze before releasing her, then went to the office door and threw it open. "C'mon, y'all! We're goin' to have us a treasure hunt!" The group looked at one another dubiously before rising and following her.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting a scary Willy Wonka vibe from this," Buffy whispered, continuing to hold her ax at the ready.

"Well, I suppose there's worse things than death by choccies." Spike started to light a cigarette, but noticed the disapproving faces of the many employees nearby and thought better of it. "Although I'm not keen on us getting picked off one by one by Lady L's GQoompa Loompas." He turned and gave Willow a wicked smile. "Got your breath back, Red?"

"Gettin' there. And if anyone tells me to be careful what I wish for..."

Louise had collared Angel as they walked, tucking her arm in his and quizzing him on Wes's description and last known whereabouts. "If you want to perform a locator spell while we're lookin', be my guest!" She called back to Willow. "There's a lot of energy in that old attic room that's white all over. What'd y'all design it for, anyway? It's so static-y in there that we haven't been able to do a thing with it. Now I like white, but not _solid_ white, and especially not after Labor Day. So we mostly just use it for storage. But let's start first with where Mr. Wesley had his offices."

* * *

A fidgety Charles Gunn paced the Hyperion's kitchen floor. Oz and Fred had pulled stools up to one of the stainless steel prep tables and begun a game of Rummy with some playing cards they'd found in Lorne's bedroom. Sodas and delivery pizza flanked their elbows. On one of the countertops a radio played softly.

"Charles, sit down," said Fred. "You're going to wear yourself out. I'm sure they'll call soon." She stood up and held her cards out. "Why don't you take over my hand? Your concentration can't be any worse than mine is, and Oz has already won all the M&Ms."

Gunn frowned and shook his head, but took the offered cards and her seat. Oz calmly slid a handful of candies toward him. "I'll stake you some plains, but I reserve the rights to the peanut ones."

"What happened to the blue ones? Did you eat all the blues?"

"Yeah. Sorry. Canasta is a violent sport."

Thu Khiem appeared from the employee passageway, bored with exploring, and hung over Gunn's shoulder. "Can I check out the neighborhood? I could totally patrol it."

Fred and Gunn exchanged uncertain glances. Finally Gunn cautioned, "Okay, but be careful. There's some mean folks out on these streets. If anyone messes with you- "

"I know, beat 'em up but don't kill 'em. Unless they're vamps."

"Or telemarketers." Gunn gave her a Black Power salute and she danced out the door.

Now it was Fred's turn to be restless. She watched the game for awhile before saying, "I think I'll go see what's on TV." When she'd left the room, Gunn shook his head again and worried his hand of cards in distraction.

"I wish I had your cool, Dan-My-Man. You're like some kinda Tai Chi Kid. Don't nothing upset you."

Oz put an M&M in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. "Inwardly turmoiling."

* * *

Giles had no Rummy cards on his table. But he did have rum. Or rather, its corn-based cousin, some fine Tennessee sippin' whiskey, courtesy of Michael's kitchen stash; and under happier circumstances he would have been enjoying it immensely. Now he was quiet and morose and close to being very un-sober.

"I shouldn't have abandoned her," he confessed to the bottom of his shot glass. "She didn't know anything about running a household. Nothing about finances. No job skills. I just left her with a child and a little money and I fled."

"Huh?" Xander said. "Wha- You got someone pregnant? When did this happen?"

"No, you silly berk. I mean Buffy. I shouldn't have run away after she and her mother died. And I shouldn't have run away again after she came back."

Xander was flustered. "But…you didn't run away. I mean, not for good. You came back later. Granted, a long time later…and only after you heard that Willow was trying to blow up the world…but hey, that doesn't make you a bad father. Watcher. Whatever."

"It doesn't make me a very admirable one, either."

With supreme effort, Xander ignored the pretty glass bottle and its lovely, conscience-numbing contents. "Well…speaking as the guy who fine-honed the art of abandoning and running away…" Up swam the memory of Anya's face when he jilted her at the altar, and her anger when he suggested that she still be his girlfriend _(RIGHTEOUS anger; I get that now)_, and her fury when he tried to order who she could and couldn't rebound to _(Okay, I don't want to get that__**, **__but yeah...), _and her horror when he tried to kill the guy she rebounded with _(And I __**really **__don't want to get that, 'cause, Spike, but…)_

He forgot what he was going to say, and stared at the ceiling helplessly.

* * *

Thu roamed several streets beyond the hotel, dodging traffic and a few curious prostitutes, before spotting suspicious movement through the window of a little book shop. The shop door's lock and latch were ripped open, and light glowed under the doorway of a back room. The slayer eased inside, squinting in the semi-darkness. Someone was lying on the floor beside the cash register.

"Looking for something?"

She jumped a little and wheeled around, and the man who'd been standing behind her bared his fangs with a blood-crusted grin. His pinched, wrinkled forehead seemed almost to wink at her.

Thu looked at him as if bewildered. Then her gaze shifted suddenly from his face to a point just over his shoulder, and her eyes widened and she gasped in shock. The vampire turned for a fraction of an instant, to see what she was seeing behind him. There was nothing…and then the vampire was also nothing, as Thu yanked up her stake and popped him in the heart.

"Dumb ass."

The danger now past, she knelt beside the exsanguinated woman on the floor and felt for a pulse, hoping for one but not really expecting it. Sure enough, the poor thing was dead…and now she'd need to be kept that way.

This was one of the aspects of hunting that Thu hated. From her pocket she produced a slender wooden toothpick and positioned it over the victim's chest. "I'm sorry," she whispered, gently smoothing a lock of hair out of the woman's face. Then with a quick push, she sank the tiny sliver of wood through the skin and deep into the heart muscle. The wound it left was quite small, and when she applied to it a smear of zit-concealing cream from a tube in her other pocket, it became almost invisible. With luck, the coroner wouldn't notice it until well after the time period for rising had passed - if it was even noticed at all.

From the dimly-lit doorway in the back of the shop came the sound of a feminine voice, humming a little tune. Thu entered the room cautiously. No vamps leaped out at her, though – only a young woman sitting cross-legged on the floor and clutching something thin and flat to her chest. One of the staff, from the looks of it; an employee tag was pinned to her blouse and a pencil was tucked above her ear.

"I've found a story about Miss Edith!" the woman squealed, and held up a book that Thu recognized from her elementary school library called The Lonely Doll.

"…although the pictures don't favor her at all. But she's very naughty; disturbs all of Mummy's things, and then the cross bear beats her! See, he's slapping her about the legs and bum. After that it's all better, and he promises to beat her again very soon."

"That's not what it says," it was on the tip of Thu's tongue to say. But maybe it was better to play along with the poor lady, to keep her calm. So instead she answered, "Wow, that sounds like a good book," as she dialed for an ambulance on the phone at the manager's desk.

"Yes, it is," the woman continued to ramble. "But not quite so good as the doll we saw on telly that time. Nice Mr. Serling; he had a lovely painting of it, and then he showed what the dolly could do. I wanted to find him afterward and introduce him to my Edith, but he wasn't at home and we couldn't wait for him long. We were ever so busy that night."

She paused with a wistful sigh. "His dolly was very wicked, and had such sharp little teeth! I miss Edith so. And poor William; he's lost to me as well. I do like the new girl much better, though. She doesn't poke about with sticks like the other, and she's got a rat in her attic. A great blue rat. If I'm very, very still, I can hear it gnawing."

"Uh-huh." Thu had stopped listening to her and stuck a finger in her ear to better hear the 911 dispatcher. "No, sir, I can't give you my name. But the body's by the check-out counter, and there's a live woman hiding in the manager's office. I think she's in shock."

She hung up, then looked at her bare hands and cringed. If Michael had warned her once, he'd warned her a squillion times how messed up things could get on an out-of-town slaying if she could be traced to a crime scene. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer on the desk; she grabbed it and used a squirt of the gel and the edge of her shirt to rub her fingerprints from the phone. "Don't worry," she called over her shoulder as she worked. "The police will be here in a few minutes. They'll take good care of you. You just stay here where it's safe, and I'm gonna wait outside for them." _Behind some really big bushes, _she added silently.

There was no answer. When she turned around, the woman was gone.

"Lady?"

Just outside the entrance of the store she found the doll book dropped and forgotten. Half a block away, she came across the discarded name tag and pencil.

"Poor thing," Thu lamented. "I hope she'll be okay." She holstered her stake and moved on to the next street.

* * *

Oz won two more hands (but generously allowed Charles to eat the M&Ms anyway) before wandering out to the lobby, following the distant sound of the television. It seemed to be coming from the concierge's apartment – and when he poked his head inside, he saw that there was indeed a TV set there, tuned to a local station. But Fred wasn't in front of it.

Oh well, he reasoned, it was a big hotel with all kinds of places to spread out. He watched the news broadcast for a few minutes, then meandered around through the other rooms: restaurant, gift shop, bar, housekeeping. Eventually he made his way down to the basement, where the light had been left on for the away team and the hatch to the sewer opened.

Fred's clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

Oz clucked his tongue. _"That's_ never a good sign."

* * *

**Author's Note: The book ****The Lonely Doll**** referred to in this chapter was written by Dare Wright in 1957, and its main character really is a doll named Edith. The television show referred to was the 1970 episode "The Doll" from Season 1 of Rod Serling's ****Night Gallery****. (Yes, this was the ep that made every kid of my generation absolutely TERRIFIED of antique dolls for years.)**


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"Three vampires dusted, one victim saved, and a lost dog dropped off at the homeless shelter! They're gonna call the ASPCA to come get it in the mor…"

Thu's voice died off in the Hyperion's echoing silence as she picked up the large note left for her in the middle of the lobby floor. She scanned its contents, then rolled her eyes.

"Oh, great," she muttered. "Stupid Old One."

* * *

Twin circles of flashlight glare bobbed along the ground of the sewer tunnel and glinted off its wet, fetid walls as Oz followed Illyria's trail and Charles followed Oz. The taller man grunted as a startled rat bolted across his foot. "This here's proof of Gunn's Corollary: 'The larger the crisis, the bigger the stanky hole.' You sure you're goin' the right way? Spike said she doesn't have a smell."

"She doesn't, but she's leaking Essence of Fred. I guess sub-letting your shell to a human'll do that. It's like tobacco odor trapped in the furniture."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure Fred'll appreciate being compared to a cigarette butt," Gunn muttered. He skidded through a stagnant puddle and almost dropped his light. When he recovered his balance he added, "If this tunnel's leading where I think it's leading…"

* * *

"Welcome to Lady Louise's Laboratory!" Louise threw open the door to what had once been Fred's research lab; now it was painted pink, smelled of cosmetics, and bustled with smiling, salmon-smocked technicians. Louise clapped her hands to gain their attention, and called out, "Hey, y'all! Any of you seen a ghost around here?" The techs looked thoughtful, then shook their heads. "Okay!" replied Louise gaily, "Lemme know if you do!" She swept back into the hall, towing her guests along with her.

"That was a very thorough investigative technique," Angel said with a trace of sarcasm. Louise patted him on the arm.

"Don't you worry, Honey. We'll turn that poor fella up somewhere. It might mean gettin' in touch with your ugly old law firm, but if they've got his soul bound by a contract - C'mon, Buffy! Don't lag behind and make me frog-march you to the next department! - one of our attorneys might be able to negotiate a deal for him." She studied Angel's head as she spoke, then reached up and fingered his hair and murmured, "I've got some moisturizer that'll take those split ends right out."

Angel's eyes widened and he fought back a retort.

They entered yet another set of offices – there'd been so many during his tenure that he couldn't remember half of them – and halted for a rest while Willow began another magic-powered search.

"Y'know," Louise commented, "I've always wondered how y'all got out of that alleyway after you blew this place up. I've heard all sorts of stories. …You don't know, either? None of you hollered out an incantation or kicked open a vortex or something? Well, that _is_ odd. Did you cast some kind of rescue spell on 'em, Sugar?"

"No, not me. I never knew about it 'til later. But now that I think about it…" Willow paused in her tracks and said slowly, "…Fred told me that _she_ used to recite all kinds of spells and stuff when she was trapped in that Illyria void, to try to escape it or just keep from going stir-crazy. If her soul had kept a psychic connection to her body, even a small one, any one of those spells she chanted could have had an effect on it – her body, I mean – and maybe on anyone else standing near it…especially if her body was feeling boatloads of stress and was in a highly-charged mystical environment at the same time…"

"And Jupiter aligned with Mars," Buffy added.

"…Which, Monsters Inc comin' at'cha down an alley with the Senior Partners' blessing; that definitely covers both criteria. And she did say she felt something whoosh past her once. 'Course it's a million-to-one shot that it happened that way, but then The Dukes of Hazzard is being made into a theatrical movie so I guess anything's possible."

From atop the desk she'd perched on, Paloma looked at the frosted-glass door to the hall and announced, "Uh-oh."

The door exploded with an ear-splitting crash…and in its shattered frame stood Illyria.

* * *

"…She still needed guidance. She wasn't ready yet to make those kinds of decisions herself. She'd have let her heart get in the way of her common sense; wouldn't have taken the proper safety measures…I made the choice for her because it was my duty to err on the side of caution on her behalf…" Giles' voice was beginning to slur a little.

Xander gave his shoulder a comforting pat. "Of course it was; you had to do what you had to do. …Wait, are we still talking about Buffy?"

"No," Giles said thoughtfully, gazing into his glass. "Willow, I think."

He turned away from Xander and with an effort picked up his monologue again, this time addressing the stinky ghost, Old Bob. "You see, don't you, that I couldn't allow us to get involved; Angel had made his bed and he'd just have to lie in it! He turned evil once before, after all. And Wesley appeared to be in league with them, too…how was I supposed to know that it was his sweetheart? Eh? Never told us anything. Andrew never said a word."

Old Bob simply stood and looked at him vacantly. "Oh, bollocks," Giles sighed. "Why am I telling this to a bloody apparition?"

Bob scratched himself and didn't answer.

* * *

"YOU!" Illyria scowled and pointed to Buffy. The slayer had only an instant to stare at this bizarre, leather-clad version of Fred - and then the Old One had her by the arm and flung her into the hallway.

The ax flew out of her hands and clanged against the metal railing of an interior balcony overlook. Before she could scramble to recover it, Illyria smashed into her, fists flying, and sent them both toppling over the railing and down two flights to land on the mezzanine below. The impact there knocked them apart, but failed to slow them down. They leaped to their feet at the same time and Illyria charged again. Now Buffy was furious, too; she grabbed a heavy potted palm and swung it like a club and clouted Illyria in the head with it. The pot burst, spraying soil everywhere. Illyria roared with anger and dove at her, whipping her head aside to avoid the handful of dirt that Buffy threw at her face. Pummeling one another, they rolled across the floor, smashing through furniture, locked in combat as tightly as a pair of hissing, spitting cats, as startled employees shrieked in alarm and dodged out of their way.

Three more thuds sounded behind them…and then they were being pried apart, Angel pinioning Buffy while Spike and Paloma dog-piled Illyria. Their legs continued to kick and piston, each determined to deal her opponent one last crippling blow.

Buffy glared daggers at Illyria. "What," she gasped, almost dragging Angel piggyback with her, "besides too much blue rinse, is WRONG with you?"

"You upset the order!" Illyria fired back. Paloma mashed her full weight across Illyria's chest and swore as the Old One almost bucked her off. "You would steal the shell's consort! The Burkle cannot rest; she weeps and fears. She gives me no PEACE!" Enraged, she sank her teeth into Spike's elbow.

"AAAAAGH!" Spike howled.

"SEPARATE!"

Willow was there, suddenly, sparks flying from her fingers. She whipped her arms out to her sides, and the two groups shot apart. Angel and Buffy slammed backward into a wall. Illyria and Spike and Paloma plowed into a credenza.

For approximately fifteen seconds everyone was still. Plaster dust wafted through the air.

The room lay in utter silence.

Oz and Gunn came jogging in from a corridor, panting. They reached the center of the room and stopped. They looked at the ruins. They looked at the people.

A Margaret Keane painting fell off of the wall.

They looked at each other.

Without a word, they turned around and jogged back out.

* * *

"I feel it. Her fear. It permeates my blood like rancid oil." Illyria paced back and forth at the end of the mezzanine where Spike had hustled her. The distance was enough to give them a little privacy, as long as they kept their voices down.

Which Illyria didn't.

The rest of the group - including Gunn and Oz, who'd decided to come back after all – milled somewhat ineffectually at the fight scene, straightening the mess, nursing their wounds, apologizing to their host. (Louise, to her credit, smiled patiently and assured them that every once in a while a good old-fashioned fistfight helped clear the air. She said it even as her eyes lingered mournfully on the destroyed credenza.)

"Look, Blue, there's nothing…tell her there's nothing for her to worry about…I wouldn't…" He drew a deep, exasperated breath and took out his package of smokes and lighter. For a moment he paused, remembering the threatening expressions of the god-knew-how-many weird employees. Then he muttered, "Fuck it," and stuck three cigarettes in his mouth and lit them all at once.

"She thinks that there is."

He clicked the lighter shut and said nothing.

Oz walked over to them. "I think we're all gonna call it a night; maybe come back tomorrow when things are a little less homicidal."

Illyria stopped pacing and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "Man Dog. Why is this happening? Why are _her_ thoughts driving _me?_"

Oz didn't blink an eye. "Because you can act out what she's afraid to express."

She released him and banged her fists against her forehead. "But we are two - separate - beings!"

"Sharing the same brain."

Illyria glared at him. "Our emotions…Fred's and mine…they're mixing together. I want it to stop. I cannot think for myself anymore!" Everyone was staring at her now. Her voice rose to a hysterical bellow. "We cannot THINK! WE WAIT FOR THE CLICK AND IT NEVER COMES! IT'S NOT COMIN' – WE KEEP LISTENIN' AND WRITIN' AND IT JUST WON'T…" Her arms fell to her sides and her voice dropped to a whisper. "It just won't come."

"Fred?" Oz said softly.

From the neck up, her blue coloring rippled and changed to pink and brown. The Old One's leathery clothing squeaked as she drew up her arms and hugged herself, quiet and miserable.

"Yeah. It's me. For now."

* * *

In silence, they made their way back to the Hyperion, and one by one drifted into their bedrooms. When Paloma reached hers, she found Thu Khiem already in her pajamas and asleep in the other queen-sizer. She slumped onto her own bed and began removing her shoes. Thu whimpered in her sleep, then frowned and twitched, and her head started tossing from side to side. Paloma stood up and took a closer look at her, and saw a sheen of sweat on the little girl's face.

"Hey," she whispered, giving her a shake. "Wake up. You're havin' a nightmare."

"…Dead inside!" Thu hissed, rolling onto her side. Paloma shook her again, and slowly she returned to consciousness. She sat up, groggy and pale.

Paloma flopped back onto her own bed again. "Damn, Chica, you look like something the cat dragged in and the dog wouldn't have! You okay?"

"I guess so." Thu closed her eyes and was very, very still. "Where's Illyria and Fred?"

"Ah, they're alright. The usual drama. That lawyer place ain't so bad anymore either; some Maybelline queen's runnin' it now. Go back to sleep. I'll tell you about it in the morning." The chupacabra yawned and pulled the covers over her shoulders.

"Paloma, are slayer dreams just stuff that other slayers have dreamed before? Or are they things that really happened to other slayers?"

Paloma's voice was sleepy and muffled. "Uh…real things, I think. Like, shit that happened and you inherit their memories about it."

She dozed off before she could elaborate further. Thu, however, continued to sit up in bed, and her hands twisted the covers back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

* * *

Fred and Buffy kept a far distance from each other on the trek back to the hotel. Louise had seen them to the parking lot, waving her hand as they disappeared into the sewer drain and calling, "Y'all come back tomorrow after you've had a good night's sleep. Things always look brighter in the mornin'!" It was only when Buffy had opened the door to enter her suite that Fred halted beside her and said in a voice made hollow with despair, "I'm sorry. I really am. I tried to stop her, but I couldn't."

"Hey, it's okay," Buffy replied lightly – a bit _too_ lightly, Willow knew. "It happens." She flashed Fred a tight-lipped smile that may or may not have been genuine and disappeared into her room, shutting the door behind her.

Fred's room was farther down the hall; like Buffy, she entered it and shut the door.

And then she pressed her face against the wall and sobbed, the heartache wracking her body into ugly, shuddering spasms. She didn't hear the door open and shut again.

"Listen to me." In the darkness Spike's arms wrapped around her like vises. His voice was a harsh whisper in her ear. "_Listen_ to me."

He turned her in the dark; turned her in his arms to face him and gripped her head in his hands; pressed his forehead against hers. "I love you. I will never, _ever_ leave you. For _anyone._"

They were feverish words, growled out through gritted teeth, and his face was rigid with their intensity. He crushed a kiss onto her mouth, and then his hands slid lower, became gentler, and he eased her out of the cat suit and into their bed.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

Most of the occupants of the Hyperion failed to go to sleep that night. They brooded, or debated, or agonized, or prayed, or chewed their lips in thought. More than once, one or another would slip from their rooms, quietly, to wander the halls like troubled ghosts.

Buffy, unable to sleep, took up a stake and made her way downstairs: past the kitchen where Oz and Willow were deep in a low-voiced conference; past Gunn in the lobby as he gazed into the dark and remembered when their hotel was full of life and optimism and a beautiful girl had eaten pancakes. Past the elevator and a sudden whiff of expensive perfume. _(Cordelia? Is that…No way; hello, Overactive Imagination!)_ Past the laundry.

She _wasn't _trying to steal Spike back. What did Fred think this was, Eighth Grade? She had far more important things to do! Mysteries to solve. Missing people to find. Villains to stake. She already _had_ a boyfriend, anyway. Ang- no, that wasn't right; it wasn't Angel waiting for her in Rome…and Angel wasn't hers anymore, either. Not that she cared. She was still muffins. Or sourdough. What was it she'd called herself? With a huge effort she tried to block out the thought of Angel and Cordy sleeping together.

A set of ornate doors opened onto the courtyard.

It was as lovely as the rest of the hotel, if a bit weed-choked. Its Spanish tiles still glowed with color; black wrought-iron decoration coiled and dipped. The dim electric lanterns from another era bathed it all in soft, spectral lighting. A marble fountain with dead pipes stood in the center of the yard, and its basin was dry and silent.

Beside the fountain, huddled on a wood-and-iron weatherworn bench, she spotted a solitary figure.

Thu Kheim briefly raised her eyes as Buffy sat down beside her.

"Couldn't sleep either, huh? That's one of the downsides of being a slayer; your internal clock gets completely screwed up. You just don't get tired the way normal people do. It's great for all-night partying and cramming for tests; not so great when you're lying in bed and staring at the ceiling."

Thu didn't respond. Buffy peered at her, a little puzzled and concerned. "Are you okay?"

Slowly, Thu straightened in her seat: feet on the ground, hands in her lap. She drew in a slow, deep breath. "I had a slayer dream."

"Oh, those. Don't worry about them too much." Buffy smiled at her reassuringly. She'd had this talk with many of the new girls; Giles had even composed a pamphlet for the purpose, to be distributed to each new slayer, explaining the whole dream thing. (Andrew had offered to illustrate it with Japanese graphic novel drawings, but Giles had politely declined.) "They're kind of strange, but you get used to them, and they don't happen that often. They can even be helpful, sometimes; you see new fight moves, learn all about demons from other countries-"

"I dreamed about what you did to Spike."

She froze, the rest of "The Talk" dying on her lips.

Thu didn't quite turn to look her in the face, but she studied Buffy from the corners of her eyes. "The bad stuff. Not the sploogy stuff; I dreamed about that, too, but I don't care about that and anyway it's none of my business and if I want to see porno I'll get it off the internet. But why did you keep leading him on if you hated him?"

The older slayer's face turned a sickly color of whey. "I didn't – I didn't hate him."

"Yes, you did. You hated everybody. You even hated _you_." Thu looked as if she were amazed at the thought of it; that a person could harbor so much hatred. "But you weren't mean to anybody else. Just to Spike. And he hadn't done anything – except regular vampire stuff. It wasn't _his _fault you got taken away from your mom."

_Mom. _Buffy's teeth clamped down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling. "You don't understand," she said finally. "It was…very…complicated."

"So what? That didn't give you permission to act like a douche bag." Thu was wound up now, and relentless. "Or to treat him like shit. Dead things do, to, have feelings. 'A person's a person, no matter how small.' …Horton the Elephant," she added unnecessarily.

"…I know."

"Then why?" Thu's troubled face searched her companion's. "You beat him. You beat him so bad you almost killed him, and you called him horrible names and left him to die and you didn't even care! We're not supposed to use our powers to torture anyone, Buffy. We're supposed to, you know, just quick kill 'em. Or leave 'em alone. That's what you told that Faith girl."

"I didn't want to kill him," Buffy whispered, from a part of her mind that had retreated as far from her guilty conscience as possible. "I ran away so I wouldn't."

"But you never told him you were sorry for it. And you let him sit in that evil school basement, like, forever, before you finally told anyone he was there and got him out. I know 'cause I saw. You'd go in and look at him and when he'd ask you for help you'd run off. If you didn't want to help him yourself, why didn't you get someone else to? His friend Clem would've come and got him if you'd told him, I'll bet."

_Because I didn't __**want**__ anyone to know. Because it was partly my fault that he was so messed up. He was my dirty little secret. _She'd tried to hide him, the way a child would hide a vase she'd broken, shoving the pieces under the sofa and hoping that her parents wouldn't come across them. Hoping, wildly, that maybe they wouldn't even notice the vase was missing.

She attempted to tighten her face into Exasperated Older Sister Mode. "Have you had any dreams that _didn't _involve Spike?"

"Well, yeah! That one about Faith. And sometimes that I'm slaying in Paris, France. And once I dreamed I was some freaky African girl dressed like Wilma Flintstone. But I don't know any of those people, and Spike's my friend, so the Spike dreams are the ones that – that bother me."

_Don't think about him. Don't. _If only she could stop thinking about him, maybe Thu would stop dreaming about it. Would stop picking up her memories. Stop learning her secrets. Stupid proximity, making everything worse.

Thu was speaking again.

"…Sometimes in the dreams I'm kind of off to the side, just watching the other slayer do stuff…but sometimes I _am_ the other slayer, only I don't always get it. Like in my dreams when I'm you. I know that we're sad and mad in them, and I know what made us feel like that, but I don't know _why_ it did. Like, when you had to leave Mom and come back to life, at least you'd found out that there really is a Heaven, and that it's a great place and that you'll for sure get to be with her again someday. Didn't that make you feel glad, even a little bit?"

Had it? If the thought had ever crossed her mind, it hadn't lingered. It'd been forgotten in the deluge of bleakness and resentment that was her homecoming, swept far out to sea in that ugly, mud-filled tide. After that, there'd been nothing left but her anger, and Spike - who'd tried his best in his own crippled, screwed-up way to help her and had wound up becoming her personal combination punching bag and human dildo. And she'd kept her friends fooled about that for months, too, except perhaps for Tara who'd been too kind to say that she damn well knew the truth. _He called himself a monster, but he wasn't the only one. The real monster was me._

And the truth now was that she did want him back. She wanted that very, very much.

"Buffy?"

"Huh?"

"It's starting to rain. And we didn't bring extra pajamas."

A large, wet splash landed on Buffy's head. So they left the courtyard, dodging between the raindrops, and went back through the pretty glass doors into the Hyperion proper, up to their respective rooms, and each girl's pensive, unhappy face mirrored the other.

* * *

Though not a slayer, Fred too lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. At first she'd stared in a fog of fearful emotion, and felt helpless and miserable. But then that helpless feeling began to piss her off. Damn it, she'd been through worse than this. Survived mucked-up relationships and paranormal activities. Survived death, for Pete's sake. Survived the void. Survived a hellish slave dimension for five years, with only her wits and no magic or super-strength. _Let's see if a slayer could pull that off!_ She was fed up with sniveling. A bundle of problems were at hand, and it was time to put on her big-girl pants and stop feeling sorry for herself and solve them.

For about an hour she lay quietly, still staring at the ceiling – but this time her brain was back in its element, and grappled with electronics and metaphysics, and began to formulate a plan. She eased upright and out of bed, being careful not to wake her demon lover. She got dressed in the semi-dark. As she started for the door, she bumped into Illyria's leathery outfit on the floor where they'd dropped it earlier. She paused just long enough to kick off her sandal and place her bare foot in the middle of the pile so that the clothes and boots could liquefy and be absorbed through her skin and back up into her body. That done, she slipped into the hallway…thinking that with any luck, this might be the last time she'd have to perform that little chore.

* * *

She found them in the kitchen, at a table spread with pencils and paper as if they were working on a due-tomorrow school project.

"Oh, good, you're both still up. You're just who I need. I've been thinking about Illyria, and Louise's robotics department, and I've got an idea," Fred announced, hugging herself with glee over her new plan.

Oz and Willow looked at her and at each other in surprise, and then Willow smiled at Oz. "You thinkin' she's thinking what we're thinking?" She held up one of their worksheets for Fred to see. "Tah-dah!"

Fred's grin spread from ear to ear. "Now we're cookin' with_ gas!"_

* * *

When the rest of the Hyperion residents began to stir in the breaking day and plot their second foray into Lady Louise Inc., they found a note on the refrigerator announcing that Oz and Fred and Willow had gone on ahead of them.

* * *

They entered the LLI parking garage – Angel, Gunn, and Spike; Buffy, Thu, and Paloma – at the same time as the company's employees, and the ride in the elevators with those weird, smiling people made their skin crawl. (The Muzak selection this time was an instrumental version of "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" by Burt Bacharach, and Gunn and Angel both found themselves musing that Lorne would think this workplace was a dream come true.) In the lobby, a cherry-cheeked receptionist who looked alarmingly like Tammy Faye Bakker greeted them with a squeal and ushered them up the stairs and through a set of doors marked with the signage of another unexplored LLI facility:

**NEARLY STEPFORD**

ROBOTS, CYBORGS, BIONIC PROSTHETICS, AUTOMATONS

_~please wipe your feet~_

From the bowels of this busy laboratory, Willow and Louise waved them over. They wormed their way past dozens of work stations…to an area of the room where to their horror they spotted Fred lying prone in a horizontal chamber somewhat like an MRI machine, with nothing but her face visible through the only glass window in the chamber that wasn't darkened. Red and blue lights moved back and forth within its walls, over and under her body. She lay perfectly still, eyes opening and closing at the signal of a soft beep. Louise stood beside the chamber's door, smiling happily.

"What the hell…"

"FRED! GET OUT OF THERE!"

"I think it's an iron lung!"

"Are you okay? Say something!"

"Willow, what's going on?"

"Can I tan next?"

"Bitch, if you don't turn her loose…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, HOLD IT!" Willow bellowed. "It's all right! We're just taking pictures of her! Jeez, don't have a cow."

"Pictures?" Spike blustered. A technician carrying a toaster-sized device approached the chamber; with barely a glance back at him Spike stopped him in his tracks by grabbing him by the throat with one hand and lifting him off his feet. "Pictures?"

Oz's face appeared from behind a monitor booth. "Body image scanning. It's a safe procedure," he said calmly.

"It's for the robot," Willow explained.

"I don't care if it's for the bloody Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! _FRED!"_

"She can't answer you right now; it'll screw up the scan. Don't worry, she's awake and fine with it. This was her idea _and_ ours!"

"I can't see her! They've got her all covered up!"

"Well, duh, naked! How else could they get accurate images of her body? You want 'em to turn up the lights and let everyone see her in her birthday suit?"

Angel, still looking bewildered, tapped Spike's shoulder. "Spike, he's turning blue…wait, what robot?"

"The one we're making for Illyria."

That shut them up…for a moment. They stared at Willow. Spike dropped the strangling tech.

"Remember the Buffybot?" Willow reminded them, waving her hands with excitement. "And April? How they were mucho-strong and passed for human? Their parts came from this lab division. Louise has agreed to let Illyria try inhabiting one of the completed 'bots; if her consciousness can meld with the robotic computer ware and learn to control it the same way she learned to control Fred's brain, she'd have her own body and she and Fred could be separated! We're going to have her try out a prototype model, and if it works, they'll give it a human-lookin' outer covering. We thought maybe if we used Fred's features for that, Illyria would feel more at home in it. I mean, yeah, it'd be nice if we could give her her original monster form, but that'd be too cost-prohibitive and harder to explain to the general public. It's gonna be weird enough that she'll still have blue skin and hair."

She paused and caught her breath. "So. Any questions?"

Paloma raised her hand. "Does Illyria know about this?"

"Uhhhhhhh…not yet."


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

"All done!" Louise announced gaily. "Y'all turn around so she can throw on some clothes!" A smiling female technician rolled a hospital screen in front of the imaging chamber, and another opened the chamber's door and pulled Fred's gurney out. A few moments later Fred pushed the screen aside, fully dressed and looking quite pleased. When she saw Spike's stricken face, her expression sobered. He snatched her up into a ferocious hug.

"Don't ever scare me like that again," he rasped, his mouth pressed against her ear. "I was about to rip that machine apart with my bare hands."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. We're just so excited about it and it's a really good solution, honestly! So we wanted to get started on it right away. They've even bumped us ahead of two other projects, and there's a breakfast buffet, and _finally_ someone in California gets that hash browns need to be served with white flour gravy. I didn't mean to freak you out." Fred wiggled around in his embrace until she could look him in the eye, and added softly, "This is really important."

Buffy bit her lip and looked the other way.

* * *

Ever the hostess, Louise gave the group a lounge area to take a break in, complete with sandwiches and coffee, before she breezed off on whatever rounds were on her schedule. Willow stuffed her mouth with cream cheese and watercress on rye and tried to speak around it. "Iss is oh ool; I an't wai- um- wait fo' Iweeria ooh ge' here!"

Buffy remained unconvinced. "Look, shouldn't we let people we're familiar with handle this thing? People that we _know_ are professionals? I can call Riley. His group of ex-Initiatives is probably just as up on building robots as these-"

"No," Oz snapped. His face had gone pale and grim, and he hugged his arms protectively across his chest. She stared at him in surprise.

"Oz, Riley's your friend, remember? He helped us rescue you from Walsh's lab. His team is – well – hey, are you all right?"

"What Wolf Boy's trying to say," Spike explained, "Is that some of us here have had our fill of blokes who play with electrical shock devices." He rubbed the back of his head unconsciously, and Fred tensed as her hand went to her throat.

"Okay, chill, I won't call," Buffy said, understanding about Spike and Oz but uncertain what the deal was with Fred and her neck. It was there again: yet another unspoken bond between others that she was not privy to, and it made her uncomfortable. She found herself missing the company of Faith and their fellow slayers. Glumly she poked at her sandwich. "Are any of these pickle loaf?"

Gunn poured himself a cup of coffee. "I gotta admit, if this lady's 'bots are anything like what we saw at Wolfram & Hart, Illyria's gettin' some classy set of wheels. Powerful, too. She's probably gonna make Robocop look like a wind-up toy." He took a gulp of java as the lounge door opened and a young woman backed into the room with a fresh plate of pastries…and then he choked and sprayed the mouthful of coffee across his lap.

"CHARLES!" the young woman squealed with delight.

Gunn stared and set his cup down. "Harmony?"

* * *

"It_ is_ you! Oh my god, I thought they were just pulling my finger when they said you guys were here! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Harm flopped down the pastry tray and threw her arms around Gunn's neck. "And FRED! You're, like, alive and stuff!" She released her choke hold on Gunn and danced over to Winifred. "And you're not that ooky blue thing anymore!" She gave Fred an enthusiastic hug, then added cautiously, "You're _not,_ are you?"

Fred grinned. "Not at the moment."

"Oh, good, 'cause I guess I just totally insulted her and I don't want to get punched in the face again. Welcome back!" She turned and looked at the rest of the group one by one, murmuring, "Don't know you - don't know you - hi, Oz! – ew, slayer – Blondie Bear! – Willow, hi, I guess – hi, Angel! You're not still pissed at me, are you?"

Angel groaned. "Please don't tell me you work here."

"Well, yeah! Thanks to your nice reference report paper!"

Spike rolled his eyes. "You gave her a reference?"

"Shut up, Spike."

"Hey, I'm a valuable part of this company!" Harmony said, offended. "And I get a major discount on the makeup and hair care products, and their shoe line is killer. And no, Buffy, I haven't eaten anybody in ages, so just leave me alone. Angel, make her put away that stake."

"It's all right, Buffy," Angel said quietly, then to Harmony he added, "You'd better be telling the truth."

"Pinky swear! They've got an even stiffer no-kill policy here than our old job had."

"I can't believe I'm listening to this," Buffy said, hands on hips and still holding her stake, its tip pointing directly at her former classmate-turned-vampire. "Harmony, I swear if you so much as raise a hickey on anyone human, your ass is ash."

Harmony stepped back nervously, but gave her a defiant pout. "Meanie."

"Hey, cool; petit fours," Paloma said. She scooped up one of the small iced cakes from the pastry tray and popped it into her mouth, her sharp little piranha teeth gleaming. "Y'all have dulces like this every day?" At Harmony's blank look she added, "Desserts."

"Oh! Yeah, sure. I don't speak Italian." Harm paused as another staff member waved and gestured to her from the hallway. "Oh, they've got a robot ready for you in the lab! Come on; we can take the cakes with us." She grabbed the tray and waved back to her co-worker in the hall. "Hang on, we're coming!"

In the laboratory, they met again with a proud Louise as her scientists showed them the features of Illyria's new mechanical body. It stood unaided, looking eerily like a crash test dummy or department store mannequin, faceless and skinless and bald as an egg. Its artificial jaw had no lips and its artificial eyes no lids; the gelatinous eyeball surfaces had yet to be installed, and tiny twin cameras sat exposed in the gaping sockets.

"It'll be a perfect fit!" Willow cheered. "And once we get it decorated, you won't be able to tell the difference between IllyriaBot and IllyriaFred, right, Fred? …Fred?"

Fred didn't answer. Her eyes were shut and her head lowered, and her mouth was moving silently. She seemed to be having a conversation with herself, grimacing and scowling one moment and earnest and beguiling the next. Faint streaks of blue faded in and out across her skin.

Then, suddenly, the bluish tint vanished completely and she was herself again.

"I think I've talked her into it. She says she's willing to give it a try."

"Illyria? She's here?" Angel asked.

"Uh-huh. Hang on a sec."

Then Fred was gone and Illyria stood in her place, looking imperious. She eyed the robot suspiciously.

"Don't worry," Oz assured her. "I know it looks all Metropolis Maschinenmensch Maria right now, but wait 'til you try it on."

Slowly, deliberately, Illyria walked all around the robot. "The Burkle claims that because this is a machine rather than a living organism, I will be able to enter and exit it at will. Is that correct?"

"That's right," Willow said, "You'll have your own little doggy door, and when you want to go astral cruisin' - which, hey, I don't blame you; I'm an a-plane surfer myself - you can just park it in the corner. Only don't leave it laying around in public, 'cause the police would probably haul it off."

Illyria stared at her without saying anything, until Willow began to squirm uncomfortably. Finally she blurted, "So go on, hop in and take it for a spin around the block!"

The Old One turned her gaze to the robot once more. She cocked her head to one side; ran her hand over a ventilation screen at its waistline. Then in the blink of an eye, the alien color and haughty demeanor disappeared, and gentle Fred was back.

"My goodness," said Louise happily, "It's just like watchin' _The Three Faces of Eve,_ ain't it?"

Circuitry lights inside the transparent shell of the 'bot began to glow and wink, and several of the gauges detected a slight rise in temperature. A pleasant technician studying the monitors gave Louise the thumbs-up gesture. "She's loading her brainwave data into the unit successfully. It shouldn't be much longer before we see physical movement."

Harmony, who had lingered at the edge of the group and taken a seat next to Thu, smiled at the young girl in a friendly manner. Thu smiled back. "I love your outfit," she whispered.

"Why, thank you!" Harm replied. "Aren't you the cutest thing! Are you here on a Career Day assignment or something?"

"No, I'm a slayer. Career Days blow."

"God, tell me about it. Like some old guy with a comb-over would know what kind of job I'd be good at."

Thu nodded. "Really."

They watched the robot in comfortable silence for a few moments. Then as their respective identities simultaneously dawned on them, they suddenly glanced warily at each other and inched their chairs farther apart.

The 'bot's mouth opened. Its synthetic tongue made a tentative, exploratory motion that reminded its audience horribly of a garden slug. And then from the orifice, through intricate speakers embedded in the roof of its mouth, they heard the voice of Illyria.

"This…may…do."

* * *

She was clumsy at first, staggering a little and moving her hands and fingers as if they were cursed with arthritis. She took a few halting steps, overbalanced, and toppled forward, but when Angel caught her arm to steady her she shook him off. Her eye cameras turned slightly in their sockets and fixed on him. "I do this on my own," she said - slowly, but with menace in her new mechanical voice.

"Fine," Angel huffed, and stepped back. He found himself itching to poke those creepy little cameras out with his fingers and see how she liked it.

She continued to experiment with body movement, swinging her robotic arms, grasping objects, stepping heel to toe. Within half an hour, she'd gotten the hang of it, and was marching confidently around the room. "I want to lift something now," she announced. "And then I want to break it and throw it."

"Don't look at me, C-3PO," Spike snorted.

"I can take her to my home dimension for a couple of hours," Paloma offered. "There's all kinds of rocks and shit she could bust up without bothering anybody."

"Well, that's awful sweet of you! I'll have to round up a non-human tech to send with y'all, though, on account of that poisonous air there. Our little lungs couldn't handle it." Louise winked and picked up a phone to find the proper personnel.

"I think I'll go along, too," Angel said. His own little lungs, he knew, would be quite safe. There was no telling how exuberant Illyria might get with her rock-throwing.

"And I think I'll just stay right here. I've sort of missed L.A. – well, small parts of it – believe I'll wander about and do some revisiting." Spike pulled several wadded, rumpled bills of U.S. currency from his pocket and began calculating how far in the city they would take him.

"The sun's still up," Oz reminded him.

"Uh. Right. Well, it's a good job that there's still miles of underground and assorted tunnels all over. Any of you gents and ladies want to meet up with me somewhere accessible?"

He flashed at them all the charming, slightly wicked smile that Buffy remembered so well from the time before his soul…the time when that smile was aimed at her and her alone, daring her to give in to carnal urges and join him in the dark; the concealing, blessed dark…

"Oh, can I go, too? Could I take the rest of the day off, Ms. Albright? These are all my old friends and I haven't seen them in soooooo long!" Harmony jumped up and down and clutched at Gunn's arm and batted her eyelashes at Lady Louise imploringly. "Please, please, please, please, please…"

"Lord, yes. Go, scat, clear outta here." Louise waved Harmony away. "And you behave yourself out there, y'hear? Don't make Louise have to come after you."

"You're the best boss _ever!"_ Harmony cheered. Then she turned to Angel. "Oh, you were okay, too."

Angel rolled his eyes.

* * *

The clacking of Harmony's high heels echoed like ticks of a clock in the rounded hollow of the tall, brick-lined tunnel. She clutched her handbag tightly and tried not to complain about the loss of the Wolfram & Hart necro-tinted cars. "This is fun," she chirped at Spike, a step or two ahead of her. "I've been working really hard on being good lately. There's so much to remember, of course, and I have to keep post-it notes all over the place to remind me what's bad and what's not. Like, I'll be right in the middle of drinking someone, and then I'll notice the scrunchie I put around my wrist to remind me not to do that, and I'll apologize and let them go. Once I even called an ambulance for one of them! He kept pointing at me and moaning to the paramedic, but everyone thought I'd just found him that way."

"Thought you said you hadn't eaten anyone in a while."

"I haven't! Not to _death._ Just to weak and woozy." She lengthened her stride and caught up with him. "By the way, is Gunn seeing anybody?"

Spike raised an eyebrow and looked over at her. "Not that I know of. What, do you fancy our Charlie Boy now?"

"Maybe," Harmony said loftily. Then her voice became eager. "We totally bonded when he was in the hospital. You know, when Wes went all stabbity on him after Fred…oh my god, this is so amazing! We're, like, dating each other's exes!"

"You haven't landed a date with him yet, Ducks. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, yeah?"

"This could count as a date. A group date."

Spike sighed and shook his head in defeat. "If you say so."

He walked on a few more paces, and looked thoughtful. His steps slowed. Then, suddenly, he stopped. Something that had been eating at his conscience for quite a long time surfaced, and he spoke. "I owe you an apology, Harm. Shouldn't have treated you the way I did the day I got my body back. I was an arse and a bastard to you, and I'm sorry."

Harmony stared at him, well and truly floored. "Really?" The memory of that insulting incident rushed over her, and for a few seconds she almost got mad at him again. "Wow," she murmured. "You never told me you were sorry about anything before. Ever. Not even that time you staked me." She continued to gaze at him, and a little happy smile appeared on her lips. "This is…this is really special." She hesitated; then: "Do you think maybe we could..."

"No." Spike was firmly, completely adamant. "You're a nice girl, in a manner of speaking, and I apologize for all the times I made you unhappy, but there is no way in hell that you and I will ever get back together again."

"Oh, I figured that," Harmony replied. "I meant do you think Charles and Fred would be interested in a four-way?"

* * *

Louise walked softly, slowly around the white room. She trailed her fingers across its walls; the walls that sometimes held, and sometimes receded back into infinity. The silence here too was infinite. Louise closed her eyes and listened to the silence. Then she opened them, and whispered.

"You're in here, aren't you? Left behind, or escaped, and hiding and waiting to see if it's safe to come out."

She looked slowly, quietly over her shoulder. "I've been feelin' you ever since they first came here. _You_ feel _them_, too. I can tell. There's not much anyone can hide from Lady Louise."

She put out a hand and touched the soul of the former watcher.

"Not much at all."


End file.
